Jackson County is on alert to evacuate. Medford is a town of 82,000 and there are lots of smaller surrounding towns as well. My heart goes out to all my friends and family in the path of the Glendover fire. It is the same not too far from home. Clackamas County is on alert — the entire county. This is nothing new to my Californian and Coloradan friends. It is so sad, so much devastation to lives, such unnecessary loss. The energy is intense. When I feel into it all I feel is fire.

I don’t remember fires like these in my lifetime. As I sat with it this morning, letting the energy feel its way into my system, it seems the world is on fire on many different levels, in many ways. The physical is a manifestation of our disconnect from the spiritual truth and we seem intent to burn ourselves down.

That which is not love fans the fires of racism, of classism, of all the isms. As the disconnect from the whole spills into the physical, into hatred of other, into blame and belligerence, into willingness to do physical harm — to pull the trigger, to hurl fire, trigger tear gas — distorted consciousness becomes visible. What was once painfully restrained within, streams out of the inner containment basin until it becomes a deluge, breaking through the dams that held it tight so long.

The mayhem in our world today poignantly testifies to the extensity of the unacknowledged pain and suffering, to all the hidden grief humanity carries. It is enough to stop a heart, to set the world on fire.

As within, so without. What we see is always a bit time delayed. What we see is the collective’s consciousness of weeks, months, years ago made visible now. We live downstream from the Head Water.

And yet a seeming paradoxical truth remains: as above, so below. There is nothing but pure consciousness teeming with flawless potential that can manifest as ANYTHING. That is the reason that mystics over the centuries have pointed within. Lifting of the veils of distortion changes the manifestation, shifts experience from hell to heaven on earth. If we continue down those same worn neural pathways we will see the same and worsening results. It is impossible not to.

Even so, pure potential, pure consciousness remains undiluted. This is why redemption is possible. In each moment of awareness, even once we move through the portal of death, it is present unconditionally. All that is required is for presence to meet presence and the sacred alchemy takes over.

Waking up from a nightmare is easier in a body. It’s the game as designed here on the earth plane, for we have a body as a guidance system. It tells us when we are off track. That is the beauty of anxiety, of joy, of all the sensations. They point the way.

If you can hear my words stop, please stop and sit. Make yourself available. Watch the thoughts going through your head. Notice them. Some will horrify you. Watch and do nothing at all. Eventually you will be able to feel all those things hiding within and that means their release is imminent. They are naught but those feelings you were unable to feel. In your very natural inability — there is no one to blame — they became trapped. You became stuffed full of all those things you tried so hard to avoid. It is natural to try to avoid life’s pains, natural but impossible here. They were created through resistance to your life, our collective lives, and they will be uncreated as your capacity to feel them builds, as you are opened up to feel the flows of life again.

This is what aliveness truly is, experiencing life exactly as it is in the moment of its appearance. Are you willing to imagine a life where we aren’t face-to-face with a new crisis each day, where we don’t need or even want to be vigilant towards one another, where we know that if the next shoe drops we will be up to the lesson?

Opening to the possibility is the first step of a journey, one that once you begin will amaze you, will leave you laughing at the you that you used to be.

Are you willing? You are the hope of a kind world, the savior of sanity, the herald of love and compassion. With you living as the present moment, willing to remain here-now, life opens into its inestimable promise.

“Manifestation flows through your consciousness into form, like light through a kaleidoscope offering up a spectacular variety of patterns. Infinite potential pours through your heart of hearts into the world. It couldn’t get here without you, even though you have no power to stop it.” Card #30, One Power — The Wild Child