I returned to the heart-shaped island in the western North Atlantic.  I climbed a mountain and listened.  In the golden light of the Equinox sun, with a chorus of crickets and chickadees around me, I called out to my higher self.  I affirmed my intention – to evolve and, in so doing, do whatever I can to help carry the evolutionary tide forward.  My will is thy will, I said.

I then descended steeply into the underworld between two mountains where I passed through a tunnel formed by twin slabs of giant stone.  There an orb of light greeted me, though I didn’t know it until afterward when I saw the picture I had taken. 

Having passed through the tunnel, I climbed steeply back up the mountain – a different mountain in 3D but it doesn’t really matter.  At its summit, once again on the bare pink and green granite, bathed in the golden light with brilliant blue for miles around, I affirmed my intention and listened. 

Nothing specific.  Nothing immediate.  Just a subtle release of fear and a resulting clarity inside.  One step after another.  Mindful.  Unhurried.  The path stretches long ahead. 

The trails were mostly empty.  I had the thought that another 911 could have happened hours ago and all hell could be breaking loose in the world.  But on the mountain that world was far away.  Our world was the perfect serenity of granite, pitch pines, wild blueberry bushes and cricket song awash in the golden angles of the September sun, with ocean and sky spread endlessly on all sides.

Et in A(r)cadia ego

Back at sea level, I traveled through the woods to the sacred boulder.  Fallen trees lay everywhere. I passed through the grassy channel where I saw the bear crossing our path four years ago.  A few steps later there was fresh bear scat.  Very fresh. 

Bear is my guide.  He sits on my right shoulder.  Nevertheless, I could not overcome the fear of meeting him in the flesh.  I took out my keys and jangled them.

We pressed forward and his scat was everywhere.  So distracted by fear this time, I missed the boulder on the first pass and we had to double back.  When we found the boulder, I was dismayed to find more bear scat its base.  My husband climbed on top of the boulder to meditate, but I could not relax enough to trust myself to attempt the climb.  Still jangling the keys, I meditated on a ledge at the bottom.  I found a chrysalis there which I refrained from touching out of respect.

Despite my fear, I managed to enter that rich dark matrix where Wolfie, the spirit of the boulder, resides.  Just for a few moments, though.  For four years now, I have been eager to return to sit with him again.  Thinking that I’ve grown since the last time, I loaded the moment up with hope and expectation.  Unfortunately my fear of the bear muffled all of that.  I was still jangling my keys after all.  But I did sense him – Wolfie, that is.  I also asked him to help me heal my relationship with work so that I can earn my Right Livelihood and work in alignment with my higher self and the evolution of the planet.   This request might seem silly, especially now, but what can I say?  We each bear a cross — my woundedness in relation to work has been mine.

That night I had a mundane dream that was interesting for being a new spin on an old recurring theme.  Usually I find myself in class on the last day and there is a final exam being handed out or a seminar paper due and I’ve done nothing – I haven’t even been attending class because I didn’t know I was enrolled.  My usual response is a frantic scramble to pull out a good grade at the last minute.  This time I decided not to bother taking the final.  I knew the class wasn’t meaningful to me and I shouldn’t waste any time on it.  I also knew that people would say that I “failed out” but that didn’t matter because I had to stay true to what I felt was important. 

The next night I dreamt that I was at a conference in a building that was a cross between a school and a workplace (the two are often conflated in my dreams).  Outside on the road there were fanatical nationalists waving the American flag and throwing firecrackers at passing cars.  Someone threw a lit firecracker at me as I walked by.  I threw it back and they called me a terrorist.  I tried to argue – next thing I knew I was inside the conference and embroiled in some drama I don’t remember.

In the hall on my way to the next conference event, I saw a dark-haired guy with an infinity symbol on his t-shirt.  I told him I liked it.  Then I saw “2012” spray painted in silver on a whiteboard nearby.  I commented on it to those around me, but no one knew what it was. 

Later I saw the dark-haired guy in a silver leotard outfit with the infinity symbol on the chest.  He was with a crew of people dressed just like him.  They were all gathering underneath a strange room.  The room was actually on the floor above us but it had no floor so we could look up into it.  All four walls were spray painted silver in countless rows of alternating infinity symbols and 2012s.

Suddenly the silver leotard group was gone. 

“Aren’t you going, too?” someone asked me.  I responded that I would like to but I didn’t have a silver leotard outfit like theirs.  A voice told me that didn’t matter.  It was my choice and here was the moment I’ve been waiting for.

And so I went to the silver room, which was some kind of gateway.  The dream dissolved as I was transported.

Both of these dreams were about freeing myself from the bonds of external expectations (good grades) and prerequisites (silver leotard) and choosing my next step based solely on my own internal compass. 

The next night I arose from a deep sleep in the wee hours and looked out the east-facing balcony of our motel room.  The night sky was bright and overwhelming.  It confused me at first, then I realized that it was the Big Dipper emblazoned over the ocean looking giant and surreal.  I went to the room’s lone window, which looked southward, and saw Orion framed perfectly over the mountains and lit up the same way.  Don’t know what it means if anything other than the fact that I am so accustomed to light pollution that I am stunned when I see the constellations unobstructed by haze.  Somehow, though, it felt meaningful.

*   *   *

Bear made his presence known — so did Falcon.  Falcon was everywhere in the flesh.  Once I saw him catching prey in midair.  Sad for the prey, but it did communicate that now is time for seizing the moment.

Earth Activation

Every time I visit Acadia, the trails present me with a coherent theme in imagery.  Last time it was splits.  Split trees, split rocks — all kinds of splits were underscored with a synchronistic glow.  The lesson I took away was that there was a split within me and I needed to align my will with my heart.

This time the imagery was about upheaval.  Uprooted trees were a frequent sight – much more so than in the past – some were bearing the bright blue paint of a trail marker.  The path itself was eroded in spots, certainly not everywhere but again more so than in the past.  The East Face Champlain Trail was completely closed due to damage and subsequent rock falls stemming from an earthquake that occurred in October of 2006.

Please don’t misunderstand.  Acadia National Park is a treasure.  It has not fallen into disrepair.  It is amazing in its natural beauty, and its many trails are lovingly kept by brigades of people who are passionate about the place.  I would gladly live there if I could.  What I mean to say is simply that the trails presented metaphors for upheaval to my eye this September.

As I’ve written before, I feel I was activated by this place and have or had some kind of connection to it.  In past years, I’ve seen familiar faces on the trails – others who kept returning and had a glow about them when they were here.  This time I saw no faces familiar from previous years.  It seemed like the activation party was over, the guests were gone and now the host was alone and possibly in need of assistance.  For all my meditations on the mountaintops and at the base of the sacred boulder, maybe I really should have done only one thing and that is ask the question: Dear friend, what ails you?

Toward sunset on the last day, we drove up Cadillac Mountain to say goodbye to the island, just as we did four years ago.  We haven’t hiked up Cadillac in a long time – mainly because it can be a let down to spend hours climbing up a mountain and then be greeted at the top by tour buses and a gift shop.  (Cadillac is the only drive-up mountain on Mount Desert Island.)  Nevertheless, this was where I experienced what I believe was a heart chakra opening last time.  It seemed that Cadillac Mountain was a powerfully active volcano, but instead of lava, it was spewing energy of a high vibration.  For those keyed to it, being in range of its energetic broadcast was a blast to the chakras.  That was my theory, anyway.

This time I got out of the car with some concern that the mountain would be quiet – that it was stressed and wouldn’t have the same power.  But ultimately, at the top of Cadillac, the energy was there.  It was somewhat subdued from last time, but it was still pulsing bigger than all of us.  Bigger than the upheaval at hand.  Bigger than the mountain, the sky and the surrounding ocean.  Maybe bigger than the Earth itself.

Can people be keyed to particular places? As I indicated in LOVE vs. FEAR, I have been dreaming and — yes — obsessing about moving to Maine for many years. Does it mean anything? Is it escapism as my leftie friends used to suggest? Yes, Maine is overwhelmingly white and yes, there are precious few jobs there, but I feel its earth so deeply. It calls me from miles away. The weird thing is that I was saying I wanted to move there long before I visited. I am not sure why – I had no known connection to the place. But once I visited it was definitely love and I have gone back many times.

My husband and I have visited Mount Desert Island, particularly Acadia National Park, several times in September, our favorite time of year. We spent the trips hiking and I saw some people on those trails – people from all over – whom I had seen in previous years. It seemed to me that we were all being drawn back. For example, one year we met a man from Cleveland in the woods between Sieur de Monts and The Tarn. As I recall, we were going to do a Dorr Mountain hike we had never done before and he appeared to be coming back from it. We asked him if we were headed the right way. We talked for a few minutes, exchanged stories and tips on our favorite trails – he recommended the Canon Brook Trail – then went each went on our ways. The next year we were doing the Acadia/St. Sauveur loop when we ran into him again at the top of Acadia Mountain. This time he approached us for directions. He didn’t seem to recognize us, but I recognized him immediately. There was a vibration in the air – something was buzzing under the surface the whole time.

That was the week of the Equinox in 2004 – which was the last time we were in Maine. It was an especially interesting trip all around. The trails always have wisdom to teach me, but this time there was more. For one thing, hundreds of crickets were congregating around our motel room door and walkway every day we were there. This might freak some people out, but I love crickets so I welcomed them as friendly visitors and good omens. (Though we had to be very careful not to step on them, or crush them in the door, there were so many.)

On the morning of the Equinox itself, we visited a sacred boulder in the woods. Actually, this was our second pilgrimage to it. On the first the year before, I rather brashly asked it to relieve me of my nicotine addiction. Do you know what? That ancient and profoundly patient boulder did indeed take it away. I haven’t smoked or used any kind of nicotine substitute since – after 20 years of hardcore cigarette addiction.

Anyway, this second pilgrimage was more intense. On our way in, the forest was thick with a deep, rich primordial presence. I was leading and halfway in I saw a black bear cross our path about fifty feet ahead. The crossing was silent, from right to left, and the bear disappeared without a trace seconds after appearing. My husband didn’t see it, but he was behind me so he didn’t have a clear view. To be honest, it terrified me, but we continued on and the presence grew stronger. When we reached the boulder, I was disappointed to find someone already there. The stranger had managed to climb on top of the boulder and was doing a meditation – one hand on his heart and the other hand gesturing toward the top of Cadillac Mountain. I was self-conscious at first, but eventually my husband and I each did our own meditations at the base of the boulder while the stranger continued his on top. I had the sensation that my hands and head were dissolving into the rock, but nothing earth shattering happened. I felt love for the rock and kissed it.

Somehow I came away with realizations that became more clear on the trails in the next few days. I kept getting images of splits – split rocks, split trees, even Mount Desert Island itself is split. The message was that there was a split within me, and that I needed to align my WILL with my HEART in order to heal it.

On the last evening of our trip, we did something unusual for us – we drove to the top of Cadillac Mountain. Sunset was approaching and we wanted to say goodbye to the Island before going to dinner. We thought Cadillac Mountain would be a good place to do that since, as the highest point on the North Atlantic seaboard, it commands a grand view. Well, it just so happened that the Queen Mary II had just arrived in Bar Harbor for the first time ever. Who knew that this was a big deal? Everyone but us, apparently. The top of Cadillac was crawling with cruise ship oglers and TV news crews, in addition to the normal crowd of tourists.

The mood was not ideal for a spiritual experience. Nevertheless, something happened to me there.

The pink haze of the sky was fusing with the pink granite of the mountain – and all around there was an incredible pulsation. The energy was palpable – couldn’t everyone feel it? It was bubbling up through me and erupting out of my head, making me a fountain. There was a lump in my throat, a massive thickening in my chest and a charge running up my neck and spreading out and up across the back of my head. I felt overwhelming LOVE. I wanted to stay there forever.

After a while, my husband indicated that we should leave before the mass exodus. I could see he wasn’t having the same experience. I was having trouble talking. I mutely went along.

On our way back to the car, I was still bubbling over. I passed a little boy who was walking the other way hand in hand with his mother. He beamed at me and then bashfully turned his face into his mother’s side as he passed by. It seemed odd then I realized that he had reacted that way to me because I was beaming like a beacon at him. He was beaming back.

I returned home with such heightened sensitivity that I could no longer bear the negativity of my job. Going back to work was like jumping into a vat of acid. A few weeks later I had the Glowing Green Man dream. A few months later, I up and quit my job.

According to P. Chris Kaiser in The Chakra System of Mount Desert Island, “Cadillac Mountain is an activator mountain. . . . As the heart chakra on the island, it activates people’s hearts” (23). Kaiser relays how he had a shamanic encounter with a bear on Cadillac’s South Ridge Trail. The encounter culminated in a profound embrace. He suggests that others have had bear experiences on and around Cadillac Mountain, more than a simple sighting like mine. The boulder, he says, is the base chakra of the Mountain. He calls it “Wolfie” after his son.

After his amazing experience on the South Ridge Trail, Kaiser awoke in the night and transcribed what he felt was a transmission from Cadillac Mountain. Some highlights are as follows:

You are being awakened. You don’t know why you come, but you come to me. I am an activation point. I am activating the Earth and I am activating you. After you walk on me changes start to take place in your life. Little did you know, it was my energy that triggered the change. . . .

There are people arriving here now on the island who will be working with me and through me to activate the energies of the Earth just as their brothers, the Native Americans, did before them. There are those who can feel the energy vibration that I send out. . . .

As I am activated, in turn the Earth will be activated. My vibratory rate will not only become stronger, but it will be raised to a higher octave. I am one of many activation points on the Earth. . . .

Be open and receptive and I will fill you with my wisdom, for I have been here a long time. Wake up and become aware. You are capable of so much more. If you fail to listen you will be missing the opportunity of many lifetimes. Actually you are here now to take advantage of this opportunity. You chose to be here. (40-44)

So . . . here is my current dilemma: The urge to move to my Right Place in the World has been building within me for over a decade. I have been stuck on Maine as that Right Place, but various obstacles have kept it a ‘one day maybe’ and not a reality. In the meantime, we continue to live in a place and work in jobs that are sucking the life energy from us. In the last several months, the desire to move out of the toxic waters around us and into a like-minded community – sooner rather than later – has become so strong that we’re considering other places that might be more logistically feasible. In the fall, we started taking trips to scout out these places. More recently, this inner urge has received independent corroboration from various external sources that echo the call to form like-minded groups in preparation for the changes to come. For example, this extraordinary talk (second video) given by Andrew Smith, author of The Revolution of 2012, which I was introduced to by Kingsley Dennis’s equally extraordinary blog. Smith’s talk is what got me thinking that maybe evolving and surviving could be the same path. Up until then I was assuming that at the critical point, I would go to Cadillac Mountain and meditate, and probably be swept away by a colossal tsunami.

So, back to the dilemma . . . Is my long time obsession with moving to Maine an indication that Maine is my Right Place? Or was I keyed to Maine merely for activation? Where is our mutual Right Place, if not Maine? But what about my connection with Cadillac Mountain? Am I one of those keyed to working with it to activate the energies of the Earth? What does that entail? I want to fulfill my role – how do I do it? These may be crazy questions, but they are on my mind.

Meanwhile, synchronicities like the following give me pause: A couple years ago, I stumbled upon a novel – self-published, I think – wherein the heroine has my name (an uncommon name) and lives in Maine. She is on a grail quest – not the kind of grail quest that I am on, but a grail quest nonetheless. In the story, her friend is killed in a car accident at a specific intersection in Bucksport. I was in a car accident at that very intersection in Bucksport in September of 2001. Given that I have only traveled the intersection ten times at the most, this strikes me as a big coincidence.

Maybe the answer is obvious and it is only self-imposed limitation – FEAR – that keeps me from seeing it clearly and taking the necessary next step.

Last fall, I started having dreams about a black bear emerging from nowhere and coming after me. I would be terrified. I had seen a real black bear in the woods twice – once on my way to a sacred boulder in Maine a few years ago. I was afraid of bear attacks. Inevitably in the dreams, I tried to run and the bear chased me, grabbing my right shoulder from behind.

Meanwhile, little did I know that there was a monstrous thing lurking under the surface of my real life. It started making ominous noises the first weekend of December. By the middle of the month, it was howling and rattling the cellar door from below. Then, on the Solstice, I had the Falcon and the Bear dream.

From the moment I opened my eyes, I knew that this dream was a gift. I’ve always loved birds and felt a connection with hawks, but there was a falcon that used to frequent the window of my third floor office, back when I had an office and the “upwardly mobile” corporate job that came with it. I loved that falcon. His aerial displays outside my window reminded me that there was something true and meaningful to do out there in the world – away from the mind-numbing meetings and soul-sickening ethical compromises. So the dream bear’s apparent partnership with the falcon put the bear in a whole new light for me.

Through the winter, as the monstrous thing broke out of the cellar and tore through my life, I clung to this dream as if it were a coded map that could somehow show me the way out of the crisis.

One January afternoon, I was waiting for a train on a lonely suburban platform. I decided to make use of the ten minutes I had to wait in the cold by meditating on the dream. I closed my eyes, began my breathing and at a suitable point started to replay the dream. Instead of letting it end where it did, I visualized entering my old bedroom, where the falcon and the bear were holding court. I knelt before them and . . . for some reason unknown to me I opened my physical eyes and looked up to see a real live falcon flying low over my head on the platform! I am not kidding. It was not a hawk. It was a falcon.

Prior to this, I had not seen a falcon in life outside the one that frequented my old office window and a few up in Maine while I was on vacation. Hawks are a common sight in my area, but not falcons.

On another day soon after, I was listening to Rick Jarow’s The Ultimate Anti-Career Guide at work. He was using the seasonal cycle of a tree to illustrate the life cycle of all endeavors. At the end of each cycle, he said, was the bare tree in winter – associated with the North and the hibernating Bear. It is a time to draw inward and lie fallow to make way for new growth in the spring. It seemed that I was indeed dealing with an ending in my life. Was the dream bear’s message to simply let go of what was ending, to embrace my present fallowness and to look deep within?

I tried to take that message to heart. Meanwhile, though, the monstrous thing was terrorizing my daily life. I was having trouble sleeping, eating, breathing – yes, definitely breathing – and concentrating. The RIF underway at work made it worse – I felt I had no refuge. Every sphere of my life felt unsafe. For the first time that I could remember, I sometimes had fears that I might not be able to put one foot in front of the other to make it through each day. I could see a sunnier place I wanted to be in the distance, but I didn’t know how to get there from where I was.

The crisis was intensifying as my birthday approached. The total lunar eclipse on the Virgo/Pisces axis occurred the day before my birthday. Every chord of my natal chart was being struck by the transits of the hour. The transiting moon – opposed to my natal sun – was being eclipsed in the same area of life that the monstrous thing was tearing up. Meditating through the hour of the eclipse, I consciously released the part of my life that the monstrous thing had taken over. I offered it up to the eclipse and accepted the loss. Then I replayed my dream of the falcon and the bear. I picked the dream up where it had ended. I visualized walking up the stairs, entering my old bedroom and kneeling before the falcon and the bear. Many times previously I had tried to ask them questions. This time I just listened.

Suddenly they wheeled around the room and came to rest on my shoulders – Falcon on my left, Bear on my right. Then a fiery orb appeared in my lap and I held it. I felt tremendous energy . . . and power.

The crisis came to a head in the weeks that followed, and I had several confrontations with the monstrous thing. In these confrontations, my expression flowed freely and truly, whereas before I felt choked. The confrontations were beating back the monster, but it had only retreated to the cellar.

Then one day on my way home from work, a falcon flew over my car and landed on a nearby pole as I was driving through a railroad crossing. This inspired me to seize the moment and take a bold action that night. That bold action was honest and true and completely unconscious of outcomes. I didn’t plan it, but somehow it exorcised the monstrous thing and something new and better began to emerge in place of what the monster had wrecked. By the summer, I found myself in a new and sunnier place – but not the one I had imagined. A better place.

Today the journey continues and the road ahead me is long. But now I feel grateful to have Falcon and Bear on either side.

On Wednesday workers in my division were summoned to a mandatory “town hall.” We arrived at the appointed time to find a cold dark empty room. The heat was off. No one had set up the chairs or the mic or the phone for people dialing in. The speaker arrived late and told us what we already guessed . . . there will be layoffs. Basically, any jobs that can be offshored will be offshored. The changes will come in phases over the next couple years. Meanwhile, trouble abounds at home. The future is a molten landscape – I no longer see the way ahead.

That night I dreamt that I was back at my parents’ house. It was night. I opened the front door and a huge falcon came in. It pushed its way past me and I followed it upstairs. It went into my old room and sat on my old bed, turning to look back at me. I remained on the stairs, yelling to the others that a falcon had come into the house and what were we going to do.

I went back downstairs and opened the front door again. This time a huge black bear pushed its way in. For a few frightening moments, it seemed it was chasing me, but it passed me on the stairs and joined the falcon in my old room, closing the door but leaving it slightly ajar.

I had the feeling they wanted me to follow them, but I was afraid. I didn’t know what to do. I went back downstairs and out the front door. I found my cats outside in the bushes, exiled from the house in their fear of the falcon and bear inside.