Once again...you are what you think you are.

Let's just say.." Ego...find something else to do ok?"

Your mind will run you around,
lifetime after lifetime,
until you still it

The world we live in is but one among an infinite number of realms and realities that are available to us. Joys and wonders abound in places that only become known when we are able to stop the constant onslaught of our egos.

Indeed, when we take into consideration the vastness of All That Is, the part of us that is our persona, our ego, is very small, so small in fact as to be almost inconsequential in the great scheme of things. Of course, it would have us thinking otherwise. In seeking constant validation for its own existence, the ego has us telling ourselves that we know better than others, that we're smarter than most everyone else (even if our IQ hovers near dog-level), and that the world would be a marvelous place if others would just follow our lead. In short, our ego is lying to us every step of the way, and it for us to find our way out of the maze of lies so our Spirit can shine forth.

That's what's important. Our Spirit calls out for release, for unbounded expression, for love and expansion. While, at the same time, our ego blocks the awakening of our Spirit with its constant distraction into mundane trivialities and survival issues which are, most often, unfounded. Isn't it time that we put the ego in its place? How about, for openers, if we give it the same consideration that we give our body every summer? How about we give it a two week vacation so our Spirit can come out and party for awhile?

The destiny of men and women on Earth today is not to be found chasing after the promise of the American Dream. Those of us who grew up in the baby boomer generation have seen the American Dream come and go. It has outlived its usefulness. There was a time when it was very attractive, but it has left many of us feeling empty. One day, we may have been at the top of the material world, enjoying all of its bounty; and, the next day, that bounty could become burdensome or nonexistent, leaving us to wonder why we spent so much time and energy pursuing it.

A common thread that runs through the minds of many of us is that there has to be more to life. There has to be something we can do, or someplace we can go, to achieve the lasting happiness that we instinctively know to be ours. Fortunately, there is a place we can go for fulfillment that offers us a vast range of wonderful experiences. This place lies within us - each and every one of us. As we close our eyes and be still for a few moments, sights, sounds, and feelings that were once hidden show themselves to us. We realize that we are more than our body. We are a Being who lives inside our physical body, and this Being continues to exist long after the physical body is gone.

As we practice looking within, we find that the Spiritual Being who lives inside us is not encumbered by the manmade rules, contrived scenarios, and survival needs of the physical body. It is unlimited. It can take us to worlds we didn't previously know existed. Suddenly, we discover that the true destiny of man and woman is having free access to higher states of consciousness. We see that our future lies in other realms, other dimensions, other Universes. We feel like a seed which has remained dormant for a long time that has now popped its head above the soil, spread its new leaves out for all the world to see, and is reaching its young branches up to the sky.
From The Intenders Handbook


My Intention for today is:

I Intend that I am taking some time today to look within.

Mr. Mc Leod's visits to a brighter economic reality...

I recently spent three weeks in the Rust Belt—America’s old industrial heartland—looking at the ways Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Detroit have responded to economic crises. I was seeking what lessons these cities might have for my hometown of Sacramento.

This tour followed 10 days in Europe studying Mondragon, which is the world's largest and most complex system of worker-ownership. Mondragon is located in the Basque Country, in Northern Spain. This region has taken an economic trajectory opposite the Rust Belt. While Cleveland and Detroit fell apart, the Basques clawed their way back from post-war devastation and oppression to achieve an average income that is now nearly 40 percent higher than the European average.

Mondragon: A better economy

Mondragon's cooperative system, inspired by a parish priest in the aftermath of World War II, combines voluntary shared ownership with democratic control. Here, dozens of cooperative enterprises build washing machines and buses, assembly lines and microchips, skyscrapers and bridges; they include Spain’s second largest retailer—with 2,400 locations nationwide—and one of Spain’s largest banks.

Mondragon has also built its own systems of medicine, education, social security and more. Their co-ops employ more than 100,000 people, and have consistently outperformed the rest of the Spanish economy. They weathered a severe recession in the 1980s without resorting to layoffs of their members. Even now, Mondragon’s tens of thousands of co-owners have a degree of job security that is rare elsewhere.

Mondragon’s success is based on collective capital. A large portion of profits is allocated to the capital accounts of individual workers. But the real genius is that until they retire, that capital is pooled for investment in new cooperatives. In contrast, U.S. retirement funds are often invested in the stock market where they may be used in ways that go against the worker and the community’s interests, such as mergers or moving jobs overseas.

Mondragon is a self-duplicating system that has created a genuine alternative economy. The Basque Country feels very different from the United States, and this is especially true in the areas where the cooperatives are well established. The co-ops link their starting wage to the prevailing wage, and generally limit executive pay to only six times starting wages of the workers; the chief-executive officer of the whole system can make only nine times the base wage. As a result, I saw much less visible poverty and hardly any conspicuous wealth.

I was also impressed by thriving rural industries. Small towns tucked into beautiful mountain valleys boasted large modern factories, sometimes numbering in the dozens. It was as though Placerville had a clean, locally owned manufacturing sector as a centerpiece of their economy. It is the sort of economy I would expect a community to choose, if given the choice.

I’ve never seen anything like it in California.

A new Rust Belt?

Sacramento has never been a big factory town, but it is facing major structural unemployment similar to what struck the Rust Belt a generation ago. Our main industries (agriculture, government, real estate) are struggling. We have a number of empty and half-built buildings, fallow fields and dead orchards. The State of California has a fiscal crisis with no end in sight, affecting this capital city like nowhere else.

Every time Sacramento gets some good news, it is quickly overwhelmed by bad. The real estate market may be perking up again, but news from the state of California—Sacramento’s largest employer—is nothing but grim: $20 billion deficits stretch off into the future. Agriculture is also quite precarious.

During my trip—a sort of economic pilgrimage—I sketched out some areas for further research, which I hope will prompt my community to ask hard questions as it faces these interlocking crises.

Will Sacramento be another Cincinnati, whose concentration of corporate headquarters protected it from the worst of deindustrialization? Or will we follow Detroit’s full-scale collapse, which has driven away more than half of the city’s population and created great opportunity for grassroots development? Will we take the path of Pittsburgh, which reinvented itself through “meds and eds”? Or will our reinvention take the form of Cleveland, where subsidy-based economic development failed and worker ownership is now regarded as the best cure for rampant poverty?

At first glance, there isn’t much similarity between these cities and our own. Our climate and culture are obviously different, as well as our economic foundations. Sacramento has much less of the deep urban decay that has stricken the Rust Belt.

However, Sacramento faces serious crises: water shortage, real-estate collapse and over-extended governments. Our troubles could eventually rival those of the Rust Belt, so we should learn from their experience and consider job creation through Mondragon-style cooperatives, as they are starting to do. This approach is relatively low cost, protects local wealth and can have a high payoff whether the economy improves or deteriorates. More importantly, cooperatives can make improvement more likely.

Each of the cities I visited are now home to some sort of cooperative organizing, more or less modeled after Mondragon. To see how this developed, and hopefully shorten Sacramento’s learning curve, let’s briefly look at their experiences.

A tale of four cities

Cincinnati is home to an unusual concentration of major corporations. These headquarters have created a high concentration of white-collar jobs, which may have been resistant to the industrial job losses faced by the region beginning around 1980. Unemployment here was not as bad as the other cities. Still, Cincinnati has not escaped unscathed and now has unemployment around 9.4 percent, compared to 10 percent nationally and 12.3 percent in Sacramento.

In Cincinnati, I visited many decaying neighborhoods, and saw factories replaced by half-vacant office parks. These sorts of problems—along with a visit by local nuns to Mondragon—have inspired Interfaith Business Builders to launch a janitorial cooperative, giving low-income residents a chance a business ownership and control of their workplace. IBB is now working toward opening a retail store.

Pittsburgh was devastated by the collapse of the domestic steel industry, but reinvented itself through education and medicine, and has done relatively well in recent years. Local unemployment is now at only 7.7 percent, well below the national average. However, there are limits to Pittsburgh’s recovery, and the city’s many college graduates often move away in search of work.

Recognizing the need for more jobs, Pittsburgh-based United Steelworkers—North America’s largest industrial union—are launching an historic agreement with Mondragon to create worker cooperatives throughout North America. This initiative, coincidentally announced during my visit in late October, marks the first time that Mondragon has publicly partnered with another group outside Spain to reproduce itself.

This is big news, but USW is not the first large organization to attempt to recreate Mondragon’s success.

Last October, the Cleveland Foundation sponsored a study trip to Mondragon, and then led an initiative that is channeling the buying power of several hospitals and a university into the struggling neighborhoods in which they are located, an area known as University Circle.

While in Cleveland, I visited Evergreen Cooperative Laundry. This green industrial laundry is the first of a planned network of worker-owned businesses linked by cooperative financing. Ohio Cooperative Solar is also underway, and next year the foundation plans to launch a five-acre urban greenhouse to provide millions of heads of lettuce and bunches of fresh herbs, grown right in Cleveland.

What interests me most about Cleveland’s efforts is the extent to which the city’s economic leaders—including the mayor’s office—have bought into the cooperative model. The city already tried attracting business through workforce development, but the lack of connection to specific jobs undermined that approach. There is an emerging consensus that the only way to sustainably build community wealth is through community ownership of business. There is also a strong common desire to avoid the fate of their neighbor across Lake Erie.

Detroit’s struggles are well known, but their severity is difficult to grasp from afar; the once-thriving metropolis is now a ghost of its former self. I only saw a fraction of the city, but in most of what I did see, empty houses (often burned or partially collapsed) outnumber those still occupied, while vacant lots outnumber them both. The last two major grocery stores closed in 2007 and in some areas it can be a mile between convenience stores.

Detroit is full of community activists seeking to build something entirely new. Community gardens flourish. A coalition of churches has joined with the United Food and Commercial Workers union to form the Detroit Community Grocery Store Coalition. They seek to address the near total absence of food access in much of Detroit.

Detroit is not hopeless. Once again, I found people inspired by cooperatives. Local activists recently brought in a speaker from Mondragon for a few days this fall, and there was avid interest in what I saw on my trip.

Bringing it home

A month of travel has given me new eyes for Sacramento’s economic troubles and for possible solutions. We don’t have to try desperately to attract outside corporations through subsidies and weak regulation. We don’t have to wait for the job market to turn around, or for state employment to recover. We don’t have to keep relying on an agricultural system that is dominated by global commodity markets and a few corporations.

Cooperative ownership can be a key part of solving Sacramento's problems. Rust Belt citizens are discovering what Mondragon has to offer, and we should too. Our nation and our own city are still reeling from last year's banking crisis, so there is a greater need than ever to find new ways of doing business.

Mondragon’s example has taken a generation to gather steam in the Rust Belt, but we cannot afford to wait that long.

Jesus is just alright with me...

Beloved one, I would speak with you about the new year of your timing. 2010, as you will call it, is an arbitrary reckoning because, as you have seen, there are other calendars and other reckonings, but you are calling it 2010. It is going to be a most wonderful year. Many awakenings. Much of judgment. Old issues are going to come up to be judged and quickly resolved, because you now have the tools: you now have the understandings you did not have in other lifetimes because you were kept within the parameters of what had been taught to you, what your priests and rabbis and what the parents and generations of parents had told you.

But now those parameters have opened up. And yes, you are going to have old issues that are going to come up, but then, as we spoke previously about the measure of mastery, you are going to see that you can quickly surrender and let them go. And, let me say first of all, as you do judgment of any issue, there is no judgment of you. It is an experience; that is all it is.

You can stay in that judgment as long as you want to or as short as you want to; it is just what you are experiencing. You will move on then to love, to love self, and to laugh at self and to say, "Oh, there's that issue again. I know it well. Okay, I'm going to wrestle with it for a few minutes, maybe even an hour, maybe even a whole day or longer. I'm going to wrestle with it until I'm really complete with it. And if it comes up again, I'll wrestle with it again, because how dare it come up again."

But throughout all of that, what you are really saying is, "I am the master. I am going to wrestle with it until I'm done with it." And that is the master speaking. It is not the issue speaking, but it is the master speaking, and it is okay to wrestle with old issues. There is no time limit. Just do what you want to do with the old feelings, and if they do not feel good, then you move on.

The next year in your timing is going to give you opportunity not only to be in judgment of yourself, but to be in judgment of others. Many of your so-called leaders are not leading. They are leading from behind, allowing others to go out and do the hard work while they sit behind the desk and wonder, "Which choice suits my career better than another choice?"

They also are wrestling with their issues, their own issues from this lifetime and other lifetimes. So you can cut them a bit of slack, perhaps not too much, but some. You will have opportunity to watch ones wrestle with their own inner conscience, their own divine knowing of peace and respect, and how they weigh the inner Voice against worldly acclamation and temporal power.

You are going to see some of the leaders waking up and speaking perhaps of unpopular things to speak; to take up issues and to be brave enough to speak against the current tide of what has been.

You are going to see some of your leaders saying things that are not putting their career forward, but yet saying what needs to be said. You have a leader in this geo-political area who came into office a year ago by speaking what the common man wanted to have said. And now you are waiting for him to get it together and start using what energy he can to put forward some of the programs that you want to see happen.

He is a very wise person. He has been a leader in other lifetimes, as well, and he comes to this position with great knowledge. And he is biding his time. He is not being indecisive as some would portray him. He is biding his time to allow some of the pieces to fall into place, to allow some of the ones that he works with to have time to resolve in their own minds and hearts what is important and to work through some of their issues, as well.

By appearances, it looks like he is not really doing that much, but the greatest of masters are the ones who do not tell you how to do something. They show you by being, and that is what he is doing. He is showing great patience. He is listening to everyone, which allows them some clarity as they get a chance to put forward their position and how they feel about various things; he is being as the wise parent or as the master who allows other ones to speak until finally they may come to some clarity about what their true position is and why they feel that position to be right or not right. And it takes awhile to be able to look at issues from different angles.

In this next year you are going to see some conflicts coming up because of that allowance, and you are going to hear a lot of the same old rhetoric, and yet there is going to be a new voice that is going to start to be heard. It began some time ago, and it is going to increase in volume so that not only those of you who want to hear a new voice of respect, but other ones are going to be able to hear it, as well.

You have built into this reality the most wonderful gift of time, and you chafe against it sometimes. There is a process that seemingly stretches on and on. There is a saying in your world that ones like the fast food; they like everything immediately if not yesterday, and so you are expecting instant results--and the expectation is based on a true Reality, capital "R", of remembering instant manifestation. You remember from other times, other realities and other times in this reality, where you would think what you wanted and with the snap of a finger or a reaching out, it would be right there.

However, the rules of the game as they are set right now in this reality are that it is going to be a process, and that takes a little bit longer. But in this next year you are going to see an acceleration of time. Many of you have been feeling that as soon as you get up in the morning, the day is finished and you have not done all of the things you had on your list to do.

This next year is going to be even more accelerated--just what you wanted to hear. However, there is a new twist to it, because you are learning, remembering, how to breathe and step out of reality and allow whatever has to be done in that day to manifest itself.

In your next year, what you have seen in the financial arena is going to continue to accelerate and to look, by all appearances, not that great. However, it is a shake-up that has been long in coming and necessary. Your banks are not going to fail. You are not going to have a cataclysmic all-of-a-sudden closing of the banks, where your money is no longer good.

But the banks are going to continue to change. The ones that have not been operating with the best of intentions--and that includes many--are going to partner with other ones, merge, and there is going to be more oversight of them. A year ago in the collective thinking there was a feeling of potential panic that the government would have to shore up the financial institutions; otherwise, everything would collapse. So some golden coins – or rather some figures on paper – were transferred to appease the collective fear.

This year there is a turnaround happening, where in truth the financial institutions--which includes all of the means for manifesting your dreams, your true dreams that come from the higher Self--are going to be partnering with you to bring forth those Dreams--capital "D"--to bring forth the dreams that are based on love, on the heart. So you are going to see a bit of what your news media loves to play up: drama.

Now, your news media is most fun to watch. They are as a dog with a bone. They will take an issue and they will gnaw on that bone, and gnaw on it over and over and over for days and days, until the next bone comes along, and then they chew the new bone. They give you the most dire prophesies because the human collective loves the adrenaline rush. It makes you feel alive.

Your news media want the sponsors to pay their salaries, so therefore they put on the programs that are going to appeal to mass consciousness, and mass consciousness yet wants the adrenaline rush and wants to know that there can be problems out there, and it wants to know about them right away so that it can secure itself against any problems. That is separated ego speaking.

However, you are also going to see a growing subconscious – and then conscious --feeling of optimism. And whenever you have optimism, in this reality that believes in duality, what do you have coming along as companion? Pessimism, of course, the negative. And the brighter the optimism, the darker the dark, so it seems.

So you are going to see in this next year a lot of the light and the dark clashing. That is where you are going to have opportunity to judge holy judgment; in other words, to step back from what is happening and to say, "Everything, even this, serves the atonement, and the quicker we get on with it, the better."

And judgment will come up. It is the human habit to first have judgment; then comes discernment. And you will be moving more and more quickly into the place of discernment and hope.

You are going to see some big battles this next year. I do not mean the usual kind of warfare, although that is going to go on, but the battles of light and dark and the battles of your leaders within themselves, "Do I dare put my career on the line by voting for something that would be good for my fellow man, or should I play along with the game that has been played for so long?" The younger generations in many geo-political groupings – countries, you call them – will be rising up in new thinking, no longer satisfied with the old ways because of the influence of your technology, the internet, which allows them access to progressive information.

This next year is going to be watched, not only by you, but by other Intelligences, as well. As we have spoken to you in other times, you are all star seeds. You have come from other constellations in previous incarnations that may be of form such as this, and more often not of human form, not recognizable form. But I will call them incarnations, because they have been experiences that could be delineated as a lifetime, however long, however short.

You are all star seeds, each and every one of you. Each and every one of the brothers and sisters have all come from different planetary systems. Now, those of you who are of like mind, have a common background, a lineage I will call it, of having come from the same star seed constellations, and you find each other and you recognize each other when you come together. There is a feeling of familiarity, a feeling that you can be friends with this one, you can be open, you can trust, you can laugh. Other ones do not feel quite so familiar.

Other Intelligences are going to be and are and have been watching this melting pot, this mixture of cultures from other planetary systems which have sent ambassadors into this reality to see how they can play in the sandbox together, whether they will play nice or whether they are going to be throwing the sand around.

In this next year you are going to be more aware of other Intelligences. You have had the most wonderful preparatory experiences, evidences of life beyond human collective consciousness. You have heard of the Roswell experience of the landing of the ETs, the extra-terrestrials, ones from beyond Terra, and you have heard the information rumored about how they were and what they brought with them.

You have had--and they continue--the most wonderful crop circles that are not man-made. Man has tried to replicate them overnight or in one day and has not been successful.

There have been sightings of unusual lights in the heavens and they have been explained as many different things, and yet you have had whole groups in various parts of this country and other countries, as well, who have seen the lights in the skies that could not be explained by ordinary means. So you have had preparation.

In this next year it is most probable--not only possible, but probable--that there will be contact made that will be irrefutable, even though the scientific community and the government is going to want more proof. Now, I say probable contact because, as I have spoken to you many times, you are great masters of improv. You are great masters in timing. So it may happen--as it is seen now, it will happen--but it may happen in this year, or it may be out a little farther than this next year. But as it is seen now, contact with other Intelligences will be made.

Ones are having--if they think about it at all--to come to the realization that there has to be life and Intelligence beyond just this planet. At first it feels scary to the human ego to think that, "There might be something else besides me. What's this ‘besides me' going to look like? Is it going to be friendly? Well, if it arrived here before I've gone and arrived on their planet, then it's probably going to be more powerful. And if it's more powerful, maybe I'd better gear up to defend myself," because that has been the habit of the past.

However, you have had very gradual preparation, preparing because it is going to happen. It is only a matter of the timing.

This new year is going to be exciting because of the changes that you are going to bring forth. Enjoy the changes and know that truly you do not walk the path alone. Always I am with you. I hold you in my love.

So be it.

- Jeshua ben Joseph (Jesus) in expression through Judith

My friend Karen and Polaris send their Love..

Thursday, 31 December, 2009 (posted 2 January, 2010)
1700 views, 3 comments (3 new) - add a comment Right now you – all of you – stand poised at the edge of a precipice, ready to jump. Or to fly. 2010 is a pivotal year. We have been telling you about changes taking place within you and around you these past several months. Many of you have begun deep, lasting, and profound inner transformation as a result of choosing to step into the flow of change that is taking place all around the world. We repeat here what many of you have heard from other sources, or perhaps sensed yourself: you are here – now – for a reason.

Most of you reading these words will feel a familiar tingling or chill right about now. You are here, right now, in this place and in this time, to take part in what is likely to be one of your species’ greatest times of expansion.

First, a caveat. The change that we speak of will take years to complete or even to come to a place that is readily discernible by most people as great change. This – now – is just the beginning stage of great overall growth. Expansion. You have agreed to be a part of what will end up being among the beginning stage of this expansion. Many of you will intend to incarnate again later on for a role in later stages of this change that will likely require several hundred years overall.

But understand, too, that change is occurring. Many of you are sensitive enough to feel what’s coming and to incorporate new ways of relating into your own lives. Many of you are now riding the crest of the wave yet to come.

Now, what do we mean by “expansion”? The human species has collectively agreed and chosen to begin evolving in certain ways that will eventually support new ways of interacting. Evolution has been occurring throughout your entire history, of course, but soon there will be more evidential changes taking place. Nothing so drastic, perhaps, as growing gills to breathe underwater, but just as significant in the overall effect.

One major change will be in communication. Many of you are facile — without being aware of it — at telepathic communication. You know without knowing, hearing, or seeing. This type of communication and knowing will one day become more prevalent, a primary mode of communication. Already there are measurable overall changes in this compared to just 50 years ago. The advent of the so-called “indigo” and “crystal” children — of which many of you have direct ties — is one contributor to this.

Another major change is more subtle but even more far-reaching – awareness of all life. We often suggest to people whom we counsel to walk outside and observe daily changes, and to spend time in nature simply being with what is present. There is reason for this — exposure to natural life and your earthly surroundings develops a sense of true compassion for the life that teems around you. Have you yet felt life in the dirt under your shoes? Perhaps not but it exists and is no different than stepping on your own arm or leg. This overall awareness of life will cause changes to how people interact with one another and with the Earth and all her inhabitants. But this change is overall slower and more gradual, with more radar blips and ups and downs along the way. You can imagine, however, the far-reaching consequences of true awareness of ALL the life that exists around you.

This is something that you can practice right now:

Take a moment now. Close your eyes and become aware of your surroundings.

Start with sound: listen to the sounds around you, the hum of the fan on your computer, the whirr of the refrigerator, outdoor sounds, your own breath. Then move to what you feel physically: the chair beneath you, your clothing against your skin, air on your face, the flutter of your eyelashes from your closed eyes on your cheeks.

Breathe now and take all this in. Allow it simply to BE a part of you, and you it.

After a few breaths, begin to allow for the possibility of aliveness in everything around you: your chair, the floor, your clothing. Feel the life contained in everything around you. Feel the connection to All That Is through all that is around you.

Feel the joy in this, and the acceptance for YOU, for all that you are. You are simply a part of your surroundings, and your surroundings are a part of you.
Now, what about 2010? We stated earlier that this is a pivotal year, and that is so. There is nothing carved in stone here, but there are some general trends to observe. We state again (we can’t say this too frequently, especially just now) that YOU incarnated in this body at this time in this place for a reason, and that reason has a lot to do with creating and supporting these changes.

Others are grateful to you. Your entire life isn’t only about serving a higher purpose, of course, but the majority of you reading this incarnated at this time so that you’d be among friends with the same idea. Turn to your right and your left and say hello to your neighbor. The people you pass on the street. The people in line at the cashier at the grocer. The people in the long snaking lines of cars moving slowly across endless highways. These are the people who also chose to be here now. You are effortlessly connected to one another in this way.

Global Changes
2010 is pivotal because much change will be evident this year. Not the far-reaching long-term things we mentioned earlier, although those will be a part of the overall change, but you can expect the following:


Lots of people will be losing loved ones this year, people of all ages who are choosing to transition out of life as a way of “opting out” of some of the other changes taking place. Making room for the new. There will be collective grief over this unusual amount of transition, but at the same time there will be joy – the summer bloom turns to dried autumn foliage and then to bare winter earth, returning once again in spring to a new green shoot and a sense of promise. This kind of deep change affects people on so many levels.


Political instability or a sense of insecurity, and sometimes a seeming lack of direction. This will be evident in many areas including the U.S, Canada, some countries in South America, and Japan, among others. The balance is beginning to discernibly shift away from old powers to other parts of the globe and this will be even more evident this year. Look for increased positive attention on several unexpected political models that show the shape of things to come: Bangladesh, Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, Finland, Guyana, Honduras, Iceland, Laos, Malta, Netherlands, Sri Lanka, and Uruguay.
A shift by governments that use stealth and covert activity toward more overt blame. Incidents could be strategically created in an effort to maintain a sense of control over what is feared by those governments to be a losing battle in the eventual shift of power mentioned above. This could result this year or soon in a possible military takeover of a major western government. This would not likely be obvious from the outside, even to the inhabitants of that country, and would likely be presented as a need to protect citizens. We could repeat now that this would be, overall, an interim measure and that further change toward a more gentle way of being will be evident sooner than later.
Personal Transformation
We realize that some of what we see as potential for 2010 on a global level can seem frightening from your present perspective. There is, however, balance in this process of change. Nothing happens without regard to the overall eventual result on a collective basis – not even the most minute, personal event is overlooked. But real and lasting change occurs from deep inside, which does often result in discomfort for a time. On a personal level for most people this year, change is present in profound and uplifting ways:

By mid-year, a sense of peace and elation settles over the world, affecting a good many people and allowing most of you to fall into the “flow” of your life. This involves really manifesting what it is you are here doing – in other words, a life purpose or life task. By mid-year, then, a good many of you will feel purposeful and peaceful.
Meditation practices deepen. More people connect with “old-world” ways: herbal lore, shamanism, flower essences, work with gems and minerals, animal wisdom, etc. More people begin feeling tapped into personal intuition or spiritual guides. This is an excellent time to deepen your practice or to begin one, especially by mid-March or so.
Though more people will be without homes, those who don’t choose to exit this year will find the care they need. Perhaps in your back yard, or from your open hand.
By year-end, then, most of you will be in a vastly different place on a personal level. To support your inner process, which in turn supports your ability to take in what’s going on in the world around you, we can suggest:

Find something that matters to you. Whether it’s a particular tree on your walk or a special person or a cause, there is something that really matters to you. Figure out what it is this year and give it love.
Observe the world around you. Whether it’s cars and concrete or it’s blooming cherry trees or tall pines, there is a beautiful world around you. Treat yourself every day with a few minutes simply observing what you see, without judging the merits of the scene. You’ll find yourself, after time, feeling compassion for that world around you.
Deepen your practice — or begin one — of connecting to your own higher wisdom. There are many avenues for this, including scrying, channeling, or simply listening for that deep inner voice inside you. Find a teacher to assist you if you feel guided to do so.
The most helpful thing you can do for your planet is to stay — as best you can — connected to yourself and that which surrounds you.

It’s a wonderful year ahead, wonderful and tragic and beautiful and human. Make it yours, this year. You are here because you chose to be here.

I affirm

As you begin your new year, ask yourself these simple questions:
What shall I now release from my life?
What or who no longer works for me?
What am I holding on to that holds me back?
What thoughts or beliefs belong to the old me?
How am I being unloving to myself?
Am I ready to let go?
What do I believe that really works for me?
What is going on in my life that is terrific and wonderful?
Where am I being very loving to myself?
Where am I most content?
Let me acknowledge myself for all the growth and change.
What do I want to bring to my life?
What do I want to create?
How do I want the next year to be?
Who do I want to bring into my world?
How do I want to look?
What image do I want to project?
How healthy do I want to be?
How prosperous do I want to feel?
How much love am I willing to experience?
What kind of world do I want to live in?
Where do I want my spirituality to go?

Then Affirm:
I am not limited by statistics, medical opinions, time, or authorities.
I am one with the infinite wisdom and capabilities of the Universe itself.
All good is available to me, right here and right now.
All I have to do is to use the power of my thoughts to create that which I desire. And so it is.

---Louise Hay