The Beautiful Answer

What do you get when you call a bully’s bluff, or do the equivalent of pushing him or her down without all that messy violence? 

Most of the time, you get your way. 

During some of yesterday and the early part of today, I stood up big to a bully. He’ll remain nameless for the moment (no need to bring even more attention to someone who doesn’t deserve it). But suffice it to say that I, uh, got my way. 

I didn’t start a fight, throw punches or go all Krav Maga on his ass. That’s not my style, anyway. 

Instead, I just stood there, demanding to be seen and heard, quietly claiming my ground. This will change everything going ahead. 

We’ll work together knowing that we are equals, and that we must communicate clearly and openly if what we’re doing is to succeed. He may still have his issues, and I may still have to look the other way when his, um, tendency to want to  senselessly dominate rears its ugly head. Not my job, man, to fix that guy. I’m here to get shit done. 

Part of me loves it when people try to push me around. Maybe you feel this way, too. After all, most bullies count on two things: 

1. That you don’t know who you are and what you want, and 

2. That you’re dumb enough to hand over your power at their command. 

Maybe that’s why we gravitate toward fantasy shows and things like Game of Thrones. We know on some level that every aspect of our lives is determined by these things, by posturing, trying to convince others that we hold the keys to a better life and a peaceful kingdom. We don’t have to be wearing armor. We feel it, at the supermarket when someone tries to cut in front of us, at work when people try to cheat us out of our rightful bonuses, or at home, when someone tries to gain the upper hand in the emotional realm through manipulation and intrigue.

Argh, exhausting. 

Lately, I’ve had some great things happen for me. I’m deeply appreciative, and looking forward to whatever’s next. Then the power struggles began. It’s too much to go into here, but people who look to bully me will find a few things to be true: 

1. You don’t know who I am and what I have been through in the past. Likewise, you don’t know what I’m capable of in the future. Do your homework. It might go better for you that way. 

2. You also don’t know who I know. They may even be people you know, or those who are more powerful than you are. Ditto. Do your homework. 

3. Lastly, you don’t know that I’m not impressed with your posturing. No one is. Getting the work done is what I’m here for. Not impressing you. Not doing your bidding. Get with the program. In the end, the work always wins, not your ego.

4. If you don’t have the smarts to do it yourself, the universe always has a way of, um, doing it for you. It can be very creative when it wants something done, and it moves with all the mercy of a bulldozer when it needs to. Just sayin’ is all. 

I didn’t make this up; the poet Robert Haas did.  And in so doing, he laid the foundations for most of my thinking today.

I’ve spent the past few days traveling to Baltimore, and giving a workshop on Intuitive Dating at breathe books there (great shop, you should go). I also saw my new play Punk Rock Mom performed there for the first time as a fully staged production. It was a short trip, yet felt long, since so much time was spent traveling, waiting in airports, eating substandard food and tossing around on beds that make what the Spanish Inquisitors offered look compassionate. 

It couldn’t really have gone better. The turnout was good at the workshop and they asked me to come back, perhaps more than once a year going forward. I like Baltimore, so this isn’t really a problem for me. I also liked the workshop participants. Each one of them seemed kind, compassionate and dedicated to healing and moving on from romantic pain. 

The play, likewise, was a great experience. The company worked really hard, and it showed. The performances were great, the staging as well, and I couldn’t have asked for  a better first experience with this one. Any artist will tell you how rare and wonderful it is when someone truly “gets” you — what you’re trying to do, where you’re going with all of it — and then how fearless they have to be to get behind it. True on all counts here, and very fun to boot. 

So why, at the risk of sounding ungrateful, was I sad at the end? I suppose it could be construed as fatigue (I have been working an awful lot lately) , or just wanting the wonderful stuff to keep going. After all, some people could get used to people telling them they were great all the time. 

I read this quote on the plane home — “Desire is full of endless distances” — and all of a sudden, something clicked. Of course it is, because the closer we get to anything we want — a job, promotion, lover, theatrical production, wonderful workshop or something else, the more we want. That desire, built of smaller needs, piles up on us until we’re forced to reach out more, to close that endless distance, until nothing more remains to be conquered. 

Getting started on that tomorrow. 

Sorry for the spotty posting of late, especially since I had made a vow to post every day for the past year. I’m pretty close, with only a few posts left to close out this 365 day period, and never expected a book, a play, a potential TV series and more in the works to be happening all at once. 

Pans to travel to Baltimore last Thursday were in place, until I woke up with a sore throat (I pretty much never get sick — maybe once a year at most) and started to worry that I shouldn’t go. I could call and cancel, I thought. Sure, I’d disappoint people and not get to meet all the hard-working folks who have worked to put my words on the stage. But I was feeling crappy as hell and had no real desire to get in a germ tube and fly across the country. Not in that moment. 

So I Dayquil’d up and got on the plane. As my husband was rounding the corner from our house, and heading for the freeway onramp to get to the airport, I kept thinking maybe I should turn back. Maybe it just wasn’t the right time. 

Then a woman with silvery-white bobbed hair, and black roots caught my attention. She was waiting at the light as we went around the corner, so she could cross the street. When I looked at her, I saw that she was wearing a t-shirt that said one word, in huge letters: GO.

There was no logo, and I’m pretty sure that there’s no band with that name. I should know by now that my guides aren’t subtle. They broadcast messages to me through the radio, billboards, people who randomly come up to me on the street, and many other ways. I have a question in mind, and even before I’ve voiced it, I’m getting information. But this one was pretty magical. 

I live in a magical world, I thought. Amazing things are happening all around me. I can either sit by the shore and miss out on the fun stuf, or jump into the moving current.

So far, I’m thrilled to be here. More tomorrow. I’ve got to get some sleep so I can teach a workshop at breathe books on Intuitive Dating, and attend the first-ever fully staged performance of my play Punk Rock Mom (for me, at least). 

How freakin’ lucky am I? 

I’m taking an important step tomorrow, and I suppose I’m still processing it. Part of me has looked forward to this, the stepping out from behind the keyboard, and then there’s part that’s comfortable there, amongst the letters and words. Maybe all writers are a little control-freaky. They create worlds; they animate the people in them. Now it’s time to see what people do from that point forward. 

It’s scary to let go of your work, to allow others to shape it according to their own whims and feelings.

It’s scarier to think about others not seeing it, or playing with it, or trying to find it’s truths. 

So there’ll be airplanes, and there will be shuttles, and rental cars and sleeplessness. There will be squishing in next to strangers who’ve hopefully showered, and bad airport food and probably caffeine, though I seldom have it anymore. There will be reading and sleeping and looking out the window, impossibly high, at clouds and sun and sky. 

Then there will be beauty, of one kind or another, if only that one person has seen fit to look inside something I have created, pull out its meaningful bits, and make vulnerability a thing to be admired. 

“Fearlessness is like a muscle. I know from my own life that the more I exercise it the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run me.” 

        — Arianna Huffington 

I used to read them, back in the ’80s and ’90s, those missed connections at the back of most major newspapers. One person sees another, thinks there’s chemistry or eye contact and advertises to see if the slight chance that the other person feels the same way, not to mention reads the same newspaper, could lead to something more. 

Part of me used to find them funny, or sad, or some combination of both. Now that I deal with all kinds of people on any given day, I’ve come to realize that missed connections may be the most common of all. 

Today I read a few people, helped extend healing to a few others, and got some writing and research in. On any given day, a theme will emerge, and today’s was love that had somehow taken a sharp right or left turn, or a connection that were supposed to happen which just somehow … didn’t. 

These days tend to make me sad. After all, my years of reading people of all kinds has taught me that we’re so seriously after the same things that no matter where you come from, no matter what your race, creed, color, shape or size, you want to be loved. You want to feel special, to know someone cares about you. To not feel alone. 

You want to feel safe and secure. You want to know happiness. And this happiness sometimes depends on forming and maintaining connections with others.

How can we form these connections when we’re moving so fast beyond one another?

How can we see that we may be perfect for someone right in front of us?

And how can we slow down  for a few minutes at least, to see the person right beside us, who wants and needs the very same things we do? 

Been blowing off blogging in order to support my husband, who had to do some family stuff this weekend. You’d think something like this would be easy. But it never is, no matter where you come from. 

We went up to Northern California with little time, and everything planned out, sometimes down to the half hour. There was little time to rest or even relax for a few moments to take a breath, and both of us had work to do, so that part wasn’t fun. 

But we both went with the attitude that we were there to support the family, to see what fences could be mended, if there were any (and there always seem to be), or even to catch up with people we hadn’t seen in years. We did that, I’m happy to say, but there are just some things you can’t really reframe about family, including: 

1. The older brother who has almost single-handedly drained all the family’s resources, with no intention of paying it back, sitting around and bullying everyone at the table, meanwhile taking up all the energy and attention of the guests. 

2. A series of siblings who shrank into corners and didn’t talk to anyone. 

3. An errant brother who called in the middle of the meal. 

4. A mom who preferred cats and quilts to actual human contact. 

Sigh. These are just a few of them … 

We all want more from our families, it seems. They don’t serve us, notice our accomplishments, or love us enough. I haven’t figured out if that’s just their nature, or if that’s what we see in them because of our perspective in wanting more. 

Whatever the case, we’re both glad to be home. Los Angeles has wide open arms sometimes, a big enough embrace to fall into when you’ve dared to leave her boundaries and come back a little bloodied, but still unbowed. 

Today I reached a milestone in more ways than one.  I’ve mentioned before that I am a writer, and have been doing this professionally (i.e., getting paid for it) for better than 15 years. I’m also a reader and healer, and have been doing this professionally (again, getting paid for it in a regular basis) for even longer. Sometimes, none of that matters, like today. 

I have been on the radio a lot more these days, to talk about Searching for Sassy, a new e-book I’m releasing called Astrology for Foodies, and a workshop I’m teaching on Intuitive Dating. That’s given rise to a pretty big surge in new clients as well. I’m getting people from England, Holland, California, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, and other parts of Europe. Even got a new client from the Cayman Islands yesterday — pretty neat. 

Let me say for anyone who doesn’t know that that it can be jarring to meet so many new people every day if you’re intuitive. You’re picking up on all sorts of energy and have to read it while talking (hard enough) and then make sure you’re making sense to your client (harder still), all the while toggling back and forth from this world to the other. But every once in a while, you meet someone you’re clearly so destined to meet, where your skill set, manner and belief system are so clearly meant to come into contact with someone else’s that it’s like two trains running toward each other on the same track. 

I don’t want to mention this person’s name, to protect his privacy. Suffice it to say that like many people, he was moving through a crisis, a time of great upheaval and tumult. I meet a lot of people like that and have learned to get out of the way and let them have their process. I can’t solve everything. All I can do is apply my skills and hope for the best. So I did, and he healed somewhat, becoming lighter and lighter as I talked to him. 

By the end, he claimed to be a skeptic who had heard me on the radio and, as he became overwhelmed and began to cry, said he knew when he heard my voice that I was the one who had to deliver a message about his healing and growth through this tough time. O … M … G. 

Cut to me dropping to my knees, emotionally speaking.

It’s not about me. I repeat; it’s not about me. I am a vessel for the divine. Its various aspects operate through my body and mind on a daily basis. It’s such a tough thing to even get across, after so long doing this. But I am so damn humbled to be part of this process, so grateful to be right here, right now, to help one more person move through the pain and back into the light. 

I strive to be helpful, to be of service, and hope that I am. 

Lately, I’ve been able to contact the feeling of love almost effortlessly. It comes, sometimes overwhelms me and when I’m crying a little, or wanting to reach out and write silly little emails or texts to people I’m thinking about but don’t usually have the time to stay in touch with the way I want to. I call them, leave messages that probably have them thinking I’m out of my damn mind, or plan what I’m going to get them at holiday time. This is what my mind wants to do. 

Writing this blog every day has been directly responsible for that. 

I would say that, generally speaking, I’m a loving person. I care about people, even if I don’t always say so out loud, and think of them often. I try to err on the side of being encouraging, even if I don’t yet understand what someone is doing, or why they want to go that way. Most of the time, I even succeed. 

I’m not looking for a medal. In fact, I think this is what we should all do, all the time. What surprises me is that after almost 12 months of making a daily search for beauty a practice, it’s effortless. I don’t have to set a reminder of my phone to hey, remember to see something beautiful. I don’t have to make it an item to be crossed off my to-do list. 

That would be ridiculous and boring anyway. 

What I love about this little experiment is that it’s taught me, even more than before, that just like the Beatles said, love is all you need. Money comes and goes. Friendships may change, drop away or become something toxic. Even family members can disappointment, depending on where you come from. But love and beauty are for always. They make our lives worth living, and if we make the time to establish it a practice, may become as second nature to us as breathing. Hell to the yeah. 

In the eleven months I’ve been keeping this blog, I’ve begun to notice a few things about the way the mind works. How it strives to keep things looking bleak, perhaps so that when joy occurs, it will stand out by comparison. 

Then there are those days when you’re able to break through a pattern that has been so much a part of your life that it’s become like a second skin. Over the years I have raged at it, coaxed and cajoled it, even tried to reason with it as I attempted to move toward some sort of final releasing point, where I could finally be rid of it for good. Today, I stood up for myself in a way I have never done before. And it wasn’t really like anything I expected. 

Most people picture fighting of some sort when you say you’re standing up for yourself. They imagine swords drawn, defensive battle postures, grimacing faces. Not that I didn’t get irritated — I suppose sone of that is required before we all reach our limits and set an impermeable boundary. I did, a little. And then I got tough. 

It’s not something I can talk about in detail because it’s still ongoing, but suffice it to say that I have been offered several great career opportunities since my book Searching for Sassy came out. I’ve had agents circling, publishing companies interested in putting it out on their own labels, and film and television producers vying for the rights. It’s all been pretty heady and confusing at times, even though I have a pretty good working knowledge of how these things work, since I’ve been employed in both the publishing and film industries in the past. 

The thing is, there are all kinds of people, in each of these businesses. There are your sharks, who want to dominate you (and the conversation, apparently), even if no money is actually yet changing hands. There are your artist wannabees, who will never get quite as close to writing a book as sitting across from you on an expensive couch, and those who crave power and influence, to somehow affect the culture at large. You meet enough of them, and they all start to look the same. 

But I’ve learned that breakthroughs seldom come when you’re trying to make them happen. They tend to creep up on you, waiting to strike when you’re not expecting it. So you have to be ready to walk away from something if need be, even if the very thing you’re being offered is the thing you want most. 

I did that today. I was ready to walk away, even though it was painful, and I ended up winning. It required absolute nerves of steel. And even though this may not happen all the time, or even most of the time, just the act of standing firm and saying no made my legs and little stronger underneath me, and my connection to the earth all the support I needed to move forward. 

… and to sleep with tired me. So much rewarding stuff going on these days, but I’m still trying to take time to smell the cappuccino. actually, that’s a terrible metaphor. I hate coffee, any kind of coffee, with a passion. No amount of coffee would probably even keep me awake right now anyway. 

I love my blog. I love my life. But I love sleep more now. 

I can always tell when it’s time to scale back on the blogging and ramp up the writing when the characters of some new work set up camp in my brain and won’t quit, even when I want and need to sleep. 

So it’s off to San Francisco for me this weekend, to attend a private reading & signing party for Searching for Sassy, then back to L.A. for some theater stuff (trying to moe my play to NYC & L.A.) and then back on the road to Baltimore, to attend a performance of Punk Rock Mom and teach a workshop on Intutive Dating at breathe books. 

Can’t wait for all that travel, and to keep listening to the stories that want to tumble out form between my ears. But tomorrow, guys, tomorrow. This lady needs her rest. 

“We’re sitting on our blessed Mother Earth from which we get our strength and determination, love and humility - all the beautiful attributes that we’ve been given. So turn to one another; love one another; respect one another; respect Mother Earth; respect the waters - because that’s life itself!”

                          — Phil Lane (Yankton Sioux)

These are the moments that sneak up on you, when you look over at someone you’ve been with for a long time and could very well be taking for granted, if you were a different person, and he were a different person, and you feel this simultaneous condensing and endless expanding of time and space, until you’re woozy and dropping and feeling the ground get ripped right out from under your feet.

And the only words on your lips are I love you and I can’t believe I found you, with all these other people in the world.

But maybe it’s not that way at all. Maybe there was no other way but to find one another, exuding pheromones and strange invisible perfumes the way we do. Maybe the tocsin beating out from your heart exactly matches the tocsin beating out from mine every few seconds, that expansion and relaxation, the muscular holography of our being. 

And when I can’t imagine what one minute of my life would be like without you in it, nor ten, fifty or a million, not out of fear of anxiety or the inevitable loneliness of passing along into another state, when my molecules will no doubt merge with yours, but a welling state of oh my God, and holy yes and how could I, of all people, get so lucky to be one of the ones closest to you in this lifetime? 

And when I drop to my knees in that place of supplication, I know all the other stuff, the moments we thought only got in the way, were that many more moments I got to spend with you. 

You ever notice that whenever you’re tweaked about something, it’s generally not about that particular moment in time?  More likely, it’s triggering something you went through in the past, and your rection to it in this moment is overblown and maybe even the slightest bit inappropriate. 

I saw this in action today, which gave me a great opportunity for reframing. I was talking to someone (don’t want to name names because it’s not about blame or finger-pointing) and this person asked why spiritual people always seemed blind to their own faults, while readers (of which I am one) often have so much to give, and those seeking readings often interrupt, try to talk over you and really don’t want to hear what you have to say most of the time. 

True, this stuff happens sometimes. Maybe even more than sometimes. But that’s not a world I want to live in, or a dynamic I choose to support. I’m not much of a fan of the “us vs. them” approach to life because it doesn’t tend to get anyone much of anywhere.

So I said I was glad they had come to me instead of someone else who might not care. She sat in stunned silence for a few seconds, I guess fully expecting me to jump on the “clients suck” bandwagon. But I don’t feel that way about my clients, even the ones who sometimes make my job harder. That’s not why I got into this lone of work, or why I continue to stay in it. 

Then she said, “You know, I never thought about it that way. That’s probably true, huh?” 

In that moment everything went retroactive, and all the times I’d complained about a client in the past (I’m not perfect; I’ve done it, too) kind of lifted off me energetically. And all I could feel in its place were sparkly little pulses of all that remained — my wish to be part of the circle of healing, and gratitude at being afforded the chance. 

I ran into an interesting conundrum today, involving something that’s seldom thought of as controversial: compassion. Most people think of compassion as us being nice. It’s the ability to feel something for other people, their lives and situations. We feel compassion for people in Japan or Haiti when they’re lives are turned upside down by natural disasters, or those babies who need cleft palate surgery in television. 

That’s only part of the story, though. 

Compassion is that feeling of deep connection with other people, that sense that we do truly want the same things. Often, it will come to us in a flash, when we’re least expecting it, even for people we wouldn’t ordinarily like, such as the Kardashians. We think — what could I possibly have in common with those self-important, overly entitled idiots? 

You’re both people; you have families. You will both live and die, struggle, love and be sick. You share the same air, and the same concerns. You both want to be loved.

And this is how compassion grows. 

The famous teaching most Buddhist teachers give about compassion is of a woman who has mistakenly dropped her baby into a river and watches helplessly, in anguish, as the baby is carried away in the current. She’s frantic with worry about the baby’s wellbeing and safety, of course, but it’s the helplessness that takes it deeper. 

We can’t always change everything. We can think about it, we can take action and try. But sometimes, things will drift away from us. Friendships die, even if we still like the person in question. Jobs are lost and found. We travel and change our perspective by looking at the world from a slightly different angle. We change, in small or large increments, never forgetting that we are human, just like others, with the same forces connecting us. How beautiful that is. 

I love oblivious people. They make it a lot easier to live my life. It may sound counter-intuitive, but bear with me for a minute: 

1. Generally speaking, they’re pretty lazy. Score one for people who bother to get out of bed each morning. You’re already one step ahead of these folks. 

2. Those who prefer to live their lives in an oblivious state do so for a reason. Their lack of interest in engaging in anything, from relationships to meaningful pursuits from art, culture, conversation or, well, anything really, makes them pretty easy to navigate around. Or avoid. 

3. It’s not like they’re going to argue with you much. So you’re free to voice an intelligent opinion without too much trouble. They’re not likely to have read up on the news, politics, sports, or much of life’s other noteworthy stuff. 

4. They like drugs. And alcohol. And various other addictions. That makes them pretty low energy overall. Score one for anyone who takes even one step in a positive direction. Look how much progress you’re making! 

5. Oblivious people, other than being a menace on the road, seldom complete tasks. If you can break down whatever you’re doing into manageable chunks and get them done over time, you’re golden! 

6. They’re pretty slow too (too much beer tends to do that to you), so if you have any kind of speed, you can run away from them. 

So ends my argument for why we should welcome the oblivious as some of life’s greatest gifts. Whenever I meet one, I’m sure to thank my angels, guides and helping beings. You guys rule for looking out for me!

OK, I’ve finally had it. In any average week, I can only get by for so long before the siren song of writing — something, anything — begins to call. I try to resist, feeling more and more like a freakin’ junkie with every day that passes. But eventually, I have to, I want to, give in. 

Then, usually, I spend about two weeks debating — should it be a play or a novel? A book of non-fiction or a screenplay? I have a lot of ideas, and am always shocked when people don’t have them, or come up to me assuming that I need their ideas: their Aunt Molly’s story about lost shoes, say, or Uncle Floyd’s Battle of the Bulge experiences. 

Um, no thanks. 

Today I finally broke. With book marketing moving along pretty well, radio appearances and tour stuff humming along, I have a little more time. Sure, I have a lot of new clients due to the release of Searching for Sassy, and a pretty full schedule on a daily and weekly basis. But I can sleep on some days, indulge my twin passions for reading and learning new skills, and write. 

So I started a new play today, currently without a title, dealing with all the little ways we lie every day to make our lives more palatable. I don’t know if it’s a need to raise my voice, or a compelling desire to tell stories or some combination of both. All I know is that I have to do it. I can’t not do it. And when it calls, I listen. 

Short post tonight, because after so much work for so many days in a row, I haven’t had much time off. Of course, it’s for a good cause — the stuff I care about, my life and career. But I find that as I near this little blogging experiment, I am drawn more and more to self-care, and find that I need to get better at it for myself. 

I spend a lot of time helping others to heal. I love this work so much that I’ll probably do it in some degree until I leave the planet. But sometimes, you need to blow off the world a little, relax, read a book in a field somewhere. Today I took a long drive with my husband, saw The Convert at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City and grabbed some late lunch on the way back home. 

These are the rhythms of a normal, laid back life. I don’t get to experience these very much, with the schedule I’m currently keeping. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. I am glad to be here, healthy and vibrant, building what I want to see in the world. So pulling away a bit doesn’t come from any resentment I may feel about working too much. Rather it comes from the need to restore and regenerate, for a few days at least, until I’m strong enough to give as much to myself as I give to others. 

Maybe it’s the prevalence of magic in the air when the Moon is full, or the fact that tonight’s mega bright Supermoon is in the watery sign of Scorpio, but I find myself practically chomping at the bit to channel at times like these. So my guides offered the following words under the influence of this lunar beauty: 

Our darlings, we have not come here to focus unduly on the suffering of the world. Undoubtedly, as the planets Uranus and Pluto move into a square relationship in the sky both in 2012 and beyond, you will be feeling the pinch of global events on a much larger scale. Governments collapsing, wars and especially rights of access to water will become more important as the days pass on your planet. You must not focus on these events any more than they directly affect you, which in your part of the world will not be as much, or as deeply felt, as in other parts of the world. We ask that you human babies, our dear ones, use this time of lunar delight to illuminate inner issues that need to be removed from your energy field. Humans incarnate at this time, and slightly forward from this moment, will be asked to leap. They will be required to go further and higher and deeper than any others in human history, because your planet is changing at a much faster rate. Many will feel this as undue busyness, or strive to become even more unsuccessful multi-taskers. We ask that this not be so in your worlds. Instead we wish for you all to be illuminated by the light of love. In our hearts you resemble tiny diamonds. So small yet to multifaceted and interesting from every angle. You bring light to your inner world, and to the world at large soon, when the world is most in need of a lamp. You illuminate those you are with with something as simple as a smile, or as complex as a problem solved. Our wish for you as humans now incarnate on this plane is to become more fully yourselves over the course of the next few days into weeks. This is not an easy practice, and one that many will misunderstand. But we feel that becoming comfortable in your bodies is one step, as is sharing your truth with others. Fundamentalism will become a byword most often used in the coming weeks and months. It is a dangerous and lopsided belief pattern that can and will be shifted by light bringers on this plane. You are part of that force if you are reading this message. Ally helps to bring more light into the world, but also helps to marshal these forces for the good of all. We wish for all to enjoy this lighter way of being soon, knowing full well that if need be, this force can be marshaled against those who would wish the world into darkness. Sorry to be heavy on you like that, but we wish to make it clear that humans have an important role to play in the coming years, as time itself seems to stop. You are the bringers of the dawn, as Barbara Marciniak so delicately put it a few years back. You are the ones who will make a supreme difference on this planet, and we love you for it. Good night, and enjoy the beautiful dawn tomorrow. It begins a new cycle, during which we wish for you to take concerted steps toward lightening up in all aspects of the word, and then bringing that light into the world a little more, and then a little more than that.