My Brand's Better than Your Brand

By Rev Amari Magdalena

Wonder why there is so much seeming descension in the world when we talk about ascension? Competition is the culprit along with its twins Comparison and Envy.  We are in competition with one another, not unlike the survival of the fittest animal world.  Sad truth or real recognition?  In a world much in need of cooperation and collective consciousness for good, how on earth do we surrender our survival instinct?

Let’s start with the word “Brand” or “Branding.”  Like so many very “testosteronized” words, this evokes an image of placing a hot iron on an animal to identify ownership. It’s like “more bang for the buck.”  And, I could come with other examples of expressions in our lexicon that demonstrate a masculine warrior mindset.

Language creates culture.  More than ever we are seeing this evidenced as American English is being impacted by emojis, memes, hip-hop, and many other sources of modification and adaptation. It appears we are talking to one another through our brands (personas) and not our authentic selves.

I was involved in advertising and marketing many years ago in a more in-depth way.  I came to understand the psychology of advertising. We had to assure that our product or service was miles ahead of the competition.  Some of that was about adding bells and whistles.  Other aspects were aggressive methods of mind games.  Personally, I strove to only develop marketing materials for products I believed actually added value when the company was mine.

Of course, today with multiple websites, I am completely aware of the need to share what I offer.  Yet, somewhere in the gap of manipulating one another and creating perceived need, is a call for truth and connection.  Connection is the much-needed game, yet our attempts to brand, separate us.

Capitalism is being held most responsible for our current raging consumerism.  Even small children are targeted and turned into consumer robots at earlier and earlier ages. We are programmed to want more. I’m reminded of the song Madonna sang in Dick Tracy, More. Lyrics ended with “and what will we want when we have it all?  More!

Sadly, we are easily hypnotized into to purchasing goods whether we need them or not.  Being good trained consumers, we often look for products whose names we recognize.  How do we know about them? Moving away from brick and mortar stores, print and broadcast media, now we’ve moved into internet commerce.

Countless books are available to teach us how to master social media to get our goods or services before the public and enjoy huge success. Multi-Level Marketing, formerly pyramid schemes, hasn’t died.  It is enjoying a resurrection with new products.  Affiliate marketing is now on the rise. And, we continue to be lured into spending.  Each brand flashing and popping up via information obtained in algorithms, commands our attention. Clever programmers are developing workarounds to overwrite ad blockers software. We are being invaded.

What happens with invasions? People run and scatter.  Result? Separation and the replay of that old game of Us and Them, lack and fear, yours and mine magnified.  Pink Floyd sang so brilliantly about this: “Us, us, us and them, them, them…in in the end we’re only ordinary men…” I’ve found that one of the saddest brands for causing separation and even wars, are religious organizations.  Our God is better than your God.  Oh my!  Everywhere, we are being pulled apart rather than moved towards one another.

Obviously, I understand the need to best present our products and/or services so that we can prosper. Personally, I believe there IS enough for everyone and that we ultimately choose based on our own pyramid of needs and wants. If this little tome stands for anything, it is to say that let’s take offensive and separating language out of our sharing.  Let’s adapt a philosophy that believes that there is no scarcity and each of us will be drawn to right, for us, products and services.  And, perhaps we could enjoy more camaraderie with those in our similar industries that adapts a win/win attitude for all.

And, for heaven’s sake, quit “Branding” anything, animals included!  Develop logos that you love. Write copy that speaks to the truths of your essence and intention to serve through offering your product and/or service.  Refer to others when you can.  Reframe from stealing ideas from others and claiming them as yours. Share your wisdom when you are able to help others. Embrace humanity not corporatocracy. Purchase locally when you are able.  Return to the goodness of Me and You.  Focus on the planetary citizenry and the health of our small planet in making purchase choices. Contribute to the common good as you are able.

“A thorn defends the rose, harming only those who would steal the blossom.”  Chinese Proverb

What Our Bodies Are Telling Us

By Rev. Amari Magdalena

We get sick or have an injury at different times in our lives.  In youth, we often more physically resilient and easily overcome.  As decades cascade over the waters of our lives, recovery capacity changes.  Most of us, I believe, feel we are much younger than our biological ages.  We may look in the mirror in amazement at the aging person viewed yet are content that inside we know we are much younger than that silly reflection.  Denial has a way of eventually catching up with us.

Some of the illusion may be OK.  I’ve been told for years that I look younger than my true chronological age.  Flattering that can be.  Enough ‘cover-up’ and we’d all look a bit more youthful.  Heaven knows the media slathers us with potions promising eternal youth in massive doses daily.  Even science tells us our cells are being made new all the time.  We are encouraged to deny the very process of generation, degeneration and regeneration.  So my question is, why then are we aging?”

I posit this question as I’ve faced a Winter of My Discontent with repetitive injuries and illnesses. Not in my plan, I think.  How inconvenient!  As I am forced to cancel event after event and absent myself from the general populace, I lift my head and shout, “ WHY!?!”  What genetic trickster is at play in my life that is impeding my good health?

Now I can hear, “it’s all in your head!”  This is followed by, “stinkin thinkin.”  And, I get it that our minds DO indeed have an impact over our overall health.  Yet, physical plan in all the kingdoms that I have observed, includes birth, acceleration, decline and death.  Doesn’t seem to be any escape. So my greater question, is what our bodies are telling us.

My message of several years has been, “slow down”.  Now it appears to be” slow the f…… down.”  Seems to be the “Upside Your Big Head” Cosmic whack that is informing me that the days of adrenal overdrive are over. My inner drive for accomplishment was early on cemented in my consciousness by parents who wanted “A” report cards brought home.  Now those folks are long gone yet their message lingers. 

So what is the pain, loss of mobility and breathing issues about, I ask myself?  Metaphysically they represent certain truths.  As you might also ask yourself when confronted by lingering health issues.  When I’m willing to take time for the answers, they are plain.  Pain signifies that something isn’t resonating-place, people, circumstances, economics, etc. Mobility, easy peasy, slow down.  Breathing a bit more complicated but knowable; feeling contracted, not expansive.

Physically there are also answers, if I care to listen.  Pain, stress simply stated.  Mobility, long list of injuries from activities not suited to my physicality. Breathing, growing up in a world of heavy smokers.  The latter most affected my late sister and me.  Everyone in our world smoked.  Finally, the body, like any vehicle with a lot of miles on it, wears out.  Some parts are replaceable; some not.

Emotionally, the answers may come from more past release work.  I’ve for many years felt that those of us with problematic childhoods have dragged a hidden ball and chain through life.  At times, we’ve perhaps cut off part of the chain or shortened it, yet it’s still there.  Energetically we still hold past experiences.  Many are saying we also hold DNA of the ancestors.  Many tools are available for finally cutting through the chain and tossing the heavy ball back into the nothingness from which it came.   Soul Retrieval, Past Life Regression, Body Work, to name a few are currently available.  Not affordable?  Barter. I admitted to my youngest son recently, that I still have cords to cut.

The ultimate answers for me, and perhaps you, are to LISTEN.  Stop pushing the envelope, start giving yourself breathing room, quit trying to prove yourself and your worth, maybe just enjoy the process of being-in all states of living. Get help if necessary. Return to those things that make you happy.  Trust yourself to find your more perfect place to live. Before it is too late, embrace BEING and surrender DOING!  And, importantly, thank this body for the journey!

What concepts!  Am I ready?  Are you?  It’s a pretty short ride all told, wouldn’t it be better to enjoy it and quit trying to navigate rapids?  I’d declared that my goals in life are now Ease and Grace.  Must be time to manifest those wonderful intentions!!

"It's also helpful to realize that this very body that we have, that's sitting here right now...with its aches and it's pleasures...is exactly what we need to be fully  human, fully awake, fully alive." Pema Chodron

"I finally realized that being grateful to my body was key to giving more love to myself." Oprah Winfrey

Home: The Lifelong Search

By Rev. Amari Magdalena

Home, a word that conjures up a wide range of emotions, plays such an important part in our lives. Steven Spielberg immortalized, "ET Phone home.”  Perhaps a lot of sensitive people, feeling like aliens in their family of origin, felt they needed to find where home existed for them.  Thomas Wolfe, on the other hand, declared that “You Can’t Go Home Again.”  Robert Frost opined that “Home is the place where, when you have to go, they have to take you in.” Dorothy, clicked her magical heels together and chanted, “There’s no place like home.” Other proclamations of alienation or longing from different perspectives suggest that this place called home, can be pretty elusive.

Some people who grew up in the 50’s may get an image of Father Knows Best, with the authoritative, yet benevolent, male head of the family.  Others may have a different image from a sitcom relating to family and the struggles that so many experience growing up.

As I entered the New Age in the 90’s, I very often heard people saying that they just wanted to go home. It was true for me.  I did not feel I belonged in the family I’d found myself in.  Going home, meant death to a few; to others the rescue spaceship coming to take them away to some alternative reality or Universe.  However couched, it was a search for some sense of belonging.  Some of us found alternative mothers and fathers and families of choice, not chance.  They, in part, served to give us a nuclear family sense and the missed lovingness.

Decades after my immersion, and then withdrawal from some of the more fantastic aspects of the New Age, I came to the realization that the cry for home was an exclamation about ending separation. As it turned out, that disconnection was not from others, rather me.  All the judgments about the characters in my play of life, and my disappointment in not feeling connected with them, really had nothing to do with them.  They were operating in their bubble of Universe, and I in mine.

Gayle Sheehy captured this realization poignantly in Passages as she lay on the floor avoiding flying bullets in Ireland:  "No one is with me. No One can keep me safe. There is no one who won't ever leave me along." Gayle realized that only she would be with her always.  As my own passages and times a flight have taught me, better find home within.  That didn't mean, I'd never be lonely; it meant, I'd learn to find comfort in being alone.

I've said it to students over the years, and I still offer it as wisdom, the greatest love affair of your life begins with you!  Best to find those things lovable and tolerable about yourself, or your entire life will be filled with *compensatory relationships.  Those are the supposed makeup for our perceived shortcomings that invite transitory or unhappy pairings.  Trust me, I know this to be true. We will never find that person who can make us feel completely at home until we create a beautiful inward dwelling.

As Spring rapidly approaches, perhaps it is a good time to do that new season cleaning and start removing the detritus of self-judgment, self-loathing, self-recrimination and start working on creating the most beautiful temple of home, that we are capable of.  This is a kind of "do unto yourself, as you do for others you valued above yourself." Only then, will you come home to you and roll out the welcome mat to your inner light and true magnificence.

Love thyself and you will have ample love to share in generosity with others without having to set Terms of Endearment.  The wave of love will then come routinely in to your inner shores, like the tide, and wash over you always..

“If you treated your neighbors like you treat yourself, they’d move!”  Jonathan at the Lighthouse in Black Mountain, NC advised me years ago.

"The lost home that we’re seeking is ourselves; it is the story we carry within our soul.” 

Michael Meade

*Awaken Your Inner Personas: Transform Your Life

Amari Breakthrough Institute

Bringing You Home, to You!

Endings and Beginnings

By Rev. Amari Magdalena

We again arrive at the Gregorian calendar closing of one year and the opening of another.  Though time and space may be illusions, in the material world we live by them.  Perhaps there is a purpose to have this structure of endings and beginnings.  Sometimes we find ourselves in untoward energy or outcomes when nothing seems to be going our way.  A definitive ending date coupled with a specific beginning date can give us hope of the cycle ending.

In the Northern Hemisphere, we also may mourn the compression of daylight as we approach the Winter Solstice.  Thus, we love to celebrate the opening up of light the next day, even by seconds.  These cycles of the sun are also part of our endings and beginnings.  Lyrics from an old song remind us that time is, indeed, slipping into the future.  And, with that future, may come renewed hope.

Though the holy/holidays can be stressful due to extra demands on our energy and time, they also ultimately give us a little spark of new possibilities.  That small ray of hope can often restart the course we are on and provide a sense of upliftment. Somewhere in the sparkling lights, that are all about, our imaginations are energized. We can be restored to a mental space wherein the earth darkness, and our own darkness, gets revved up with brightness. The increasing light after Solstice helps us get out of our cocoons of hibernation.

The New Year often finds us assessing the past and affirming for a different future.  That small spigot of hope, along with the returning light, inspires us to examine our lives and to perhaps be more definitive in recognizing new aspirations.  Resolutions may be written down.  Attention to purpose can become more compelling. We get a little Cosmic nudge.

I feel that to move with grace into the new, it is important to release the old.  Oh, not just the stuff we may label as ‘bad’ or ‘unfortunate,’ rather the contents of the old year.  Writing down the ups and downs helps us gain perspective.  One ceremony, that many new thought and other more progressive churches do, is a Burning Bowl Ceremony on New Year’s Eve.  Attendees write down the things they’d like to release and then consign them to flame.

Another tradition that I’ve done many years is the New Year’s Eve early morning world-wide meditation originated by John Randolph Price. This meditation happens world-wide at the same time.  Unfortunately for those of us on PDT, that is 4am in the morning, YIKES!  That said, the mediation is quite beautiful, powerful, and renewing.  It is a magical way to enter the New Year.  Instead of staying up until midnight 12/31, one gets up at 4:am on 12/31 and meditates for an hour or less. I’ve personally found this to be so renewing, that I choose to sacrifice sleep for inspiration and guidance.

May I suggest that you too choose some tradition, ritual, meditation as the New Year arrives to acknowledge and celebrate the inevitable endings and beginnings that we all experience in our lives. May your journey be so very blessed this year that you truly appreciate the wondrous experience of having a body on a small planet spinning in space.

 I share with you a couple of quotations that are inspiration for all of our endings and beginnings:

"No, this is not the beginning of a new chapter in my life; this is the beginning of a new book! Tha first book is already closed, ended, and tossed into seas; this new book is newly opened, has just begun!  Look, it is the first page!  And, it is a beautiful one!"  C. JoyBell C.

And, another quote that also speaks to appreciating not only endings or beginnings but appreciation of the middle moment:

"Beginnings are scary; Endings are usually sad; but it's the middle that counts.  You need to remember that when you find yourself at the Beginning, just give Hope a chance to Float Up; and it Will!"  From the Movie, Hope Floats.

Pick up that Kaleidoscope, point it towards something bright, turn it and let the refraction of light take you into Magic! Then, just put one solid foot in front of the other, and step into your New Beginnings!  Happy New Year!  May you prosper and grow in amazing ways and experience Life with Love and Joy!

Why Choose the Road Less Traveled?

By Rev. Amari Magdalena

Driving along recently, I was taken by the shimmering leaves of fall.  Instead of turning on the usual road to my destination, I chose to continue ahead.  What a wondrous display of gold, cranberry, and sienna as I drove through a wooded area.  As is often my experience, when I decide to veer from the familiar or prescribed course, wonder awaits.

I remember Richard Burton’s character in The Night of the Iguana, commenting on the fact that we live in two worlds: the realistic and the fantastic.  That has stuck with me for a very long time.  At 33 I heard Jim Weatherly’s song, The Need to Be, and knew it was my calling and changed my life direction. Over my lifetime since, I’ve often selected the fantastic.  Though there may have been real prices to pay for such choices, and there were; I would not have chosen to miss this different road. 

In Toltec shamanism we speak to the Nagual and the Tonal worlds.  The Tonal is the familiar, realistic as it were, with its metronome of time beating out what and where and with whom, we might live a more ordinary life.  It’s the 9 to 5, 7 days a week, 365 days in a year living that can be very comfortable for many.

The Nagual world leads to the path of magic and the extraordinary.  That is my favorite path as it holds the keys to what I like to call the phantasmagorical. It has always directed me to highest good even when it challenged all my assumptions and the ‘shoulds’ I was raised with. 

This path of now 44 years has given me amazing experiences.  I’ve been at 14,000 ft in Peru participating in a Quechua Despacho; conducted ceremonies in the Far East; addressed an assembly of 22,000 people; authored books; initiated apprentices with fire; promoted earth-based teaching nationally and internationally; communicated with spirits in ruins across the Southeast and Southwest; produced and hosted a radio show; started a women’s center at a university; birthed a sex information hotline in the PNW; co-hosted and produced a women’s talk show pilot before The View; co-conceived of an international women’s organization; eased people through the tunnel at death; stepped through portals of time and space near Bolivia; been hosted by political dissidents in Tito-ruled Yugoslavia and Basque ‘terrorists’ in Spain; climbed to the top of a mountain crawling through cactus to the top; lived in amazing places and met wonderfully awesome people along the way.

Not an easy path, I would say for some.  One needs to be willing to let go of the safe shore and let the rapid current move you along a sometimes raging river. Some people in your lives will move away or judge your choices. You may encounter a lot of naysayers when you choose the fantastic.  Your family may be less than enthralled with your choices. There are times of being alone for extended periods.  Longevity of relationships will most likely elude you. Yet, what you sacrifice in the ordinary will be much outweighed by the phenomenal.

Whatever is your path of choice, I would encourage to break up your routines from time to time and turn down a street you’re not familiar with.  Get a little lost on occasion.  Keep driving past your designated turn or exit.  Get off the highway.  Disconnect from the electronics.  Invite a little wonder in your experience and receive the rich rewards of moving, just a tad, outside your comfort zone.

I believe that we have within us a dormant dancer awaiting the call to magnificence and fluidity.  Our spirits are larger than the enclosures we may find ourselves trapped in. If we’ve but one life to live, wouldn’t you want to taste the fantastic even for short bursts?

Perhaps you find the routine and ordered life more to your liking.  I totally understand; it has its own rewards of normalcy and constancy.  Yet, I encourage you to every now and again, lift that veil of illusion and allow yourself a glimpse of magic.  It will add a dimension of wonder to your lives much like the glorious fall colors at this time of year do.  And, perhaps, it will give you a window into the true Light at the end of our life tunnels.  That light is brilliant, commanding and comforting.  There is nothing to fear at the end of life when you have lived your days to the fullest.  I have, and I would wish for you a taste of it even in small morsels. 

Start tomorrow.  Take that side street, stop at a little town off the highway with the mystery spot, rejoice at detours, walk in an ancient forest, sit on a beach from sunrise to sunset, find a place to see the milky way. Do that thing you were always going to do and haven’t yet.  At the end of your life, should you choose this path, you will know you are not disappointed to find you lived it for someone else. You were true to yourself and your purpose.  So invite magic and it will come!

“We’ve just to listen and know when and where we are destined to step onto the dance floor of our life purpose and trust the movement.”  We Dance to a Whispered Voice

Rituals and Ceremonies: Why They are So Very Important

By Rev. Amari Magdalena

It’s at that point in the wedding ceremony when I begin, “and now as these two lovely people have exchanged vows and rings of promise, by the authority granted me by the State of Washington, I now pronounce you…….” that I begin to choke up or tear up. There is something so very sacred about being involved in such a moment of joy in people’s lives.  It cements, for me, the importance of rituals and ceremonies for bonding communities together.

Each new moon, each full moon, each equinox or solstice, whether I’m alone or with a group, I acknowledge the passages of time and their meaning.  In groups, large and small, I am often witness to the power of ceremony to bring together a group of people in deep unity.  Total strangers are hugging one another and feeling a deep peace and connection with other humans.  A shift takes place that I experience more powerfully than in any other time and place.

For me it is a great shame that as organized religions moved away from heart-based traditions to more head space/mental experiences, most chose to eschew much of the tribal ceremonies and rituals of eons, labeling them Pagan!  So much was lost and what was kept seems only approximations of what was and could still be.

Perhaps what transpires is a sense of the importance of other kingdoms that we share this small planet with: Animal, Mineral, Plant, and Human.  The awareness of the elements: Air, Earth, Fire and Water add another dimension of togetherness vs. aloneness. In circle, as we touch hands, our own vulnerability and need for affirmation is recognized.  Since the many years ago when I had an entire Unity congregation stand and hold hands while we listened to Carlos and Johnny sing “Holding Hands,” I’ve seen transformation in minutes.

Why then would we choose to participate in ceremony or ritual?  Community is a big component: we find common ground and purpose as we celebrate.  Our dividing differences can, for a time, melt away in the feelings of connection.  The greater reason is perhaps the overriding feeling of Oneness: we lose our separateness as we hold hands in ceremony and we enter the precious moment of Now. 

The memorial service of John McCain was a huge example of community coming together in a ceremony to honor and bridge differences.  My own sister Leanne’s memorial, in a packed large church in Thornbury Bristol England, was a testament to her influence in the city and love of those whose lives she touched.

Another purpose of ritual or ceremony is to quiet the chaos, still the noises-outer and inner and to surrender to something greater than our small individual universes and to, in the suspended sense of time, enter into magic!  And what I know to be true is: “Evolution will, not in my opinion, wait for us to find time to participate.  It will roll on.  In the direction that the planet is currently headed, that may breed disaster for humanity.  Thus, I feel it is so imperative for us to make that time and space to gather together with intention of facilitating our individual and planetary upliftment.” ¹

Wherever you are, I implore you to create Peace Circles as we did in the 1990’s.  Gather with your friends and neighbors in a circle. Focus on the world you wish to live in.  Hold an earth ball or an imaginary one, turn it around feeling the oceans and land masses.  Acknowledge all the diversity of each of Earth’s kingdoms. Chant, “Peace” and “Planetary Harmony.”  Close, holding hands, and sing for one more time, Imagine along with John. You will feel better and that energy will encircle the planet, much as our jet streams do, yet with a loving energy.

 “When humans participate in ceremony, they enter a sacred space.

Everything outside of that space shrivels in importance.

Time takes on a different dimension.

Emotions flow more freely.

The bodies of the participants become filled with the energy of life,

and this energy reaches out and blesses the creation around them.

All is made new; everything becomes sacred.” Sun Bear

^1. Blue Moons and Golden Suns: Meditations & Celebrations for Aligning with Natural Rhythms. 

Sludge

By Rev. Amari Magdalena

Years ago, I was driving an older Honda.  The fuel filter got clogged up.  Taking it to a mechanic, he told me that with older cars, you must keep your tank filled with gas and not let it ride down to empty as sludge accumulates at the bottom and mucks up the fuel filter and possibly the tank.  I’d been driving between Ft. Lauderdale FL and Atlanta GA.  As gas was so much cheaper in Georgia, I’d press it until I crossed the border.  Obviously, a mistake.

I got to thinking about our current political and social situation in the country.  The above is a great metaphor for what we are seeing manifest before us.    We collectively let the tank run too close to empty out of perhaps complacency or just some false sense of comfort.  In the eight years of the previous administration, there was a calmness and a steadiness that caused us to not get too concerned.  Sure, things came up, yet they seemed to get mainly handled and we rested on our laurels. 

Ahaa!  New administration and that fuel filter suddenly got clogged up and we are now looking at replacing the whole fuel system.  Sludge, it ain’t pretty, has appeared in every corner of our complacency. KKK, White Supremacy, gun violence, “Me Too”, return of misogyny, immigration witch hunts, incarcerating children, environmental protection dismantling, ad nauseum.  Everything under the hood, suddenly went to the proverbial hell and leaks and clogs prevailed.   Our engine is sputtering, and backfiring and we are wondering if we’ll ever be able to get the old car running or if we need to replace it.

"Maintenance," declared longshoreman Eric Hoffer, and lack thereof, leads to the demise of governments. Truth be told, we’ve got sludge everywhere: our oceans, our rivers, our air, even our own guts (nutritionists tells us). Folks, we’re here; no hiding from the truth, no fluff to cover it up, no mantras that are going to turn this engine over. 

It is time to stop complaining, moaning, bemoaning, gasping, choking on the sludge, and throwing up our hands.  The wheels have turned, and we must now build a better vehicle. Now is the moment for new ideas, think tanks, energetic salons of discussion, new politics/parties, new blood in the institutions, and a revision of what is the vehicle that will serve the most people.  We’ve tried universally various models: communism, socialism, dictatorship, oligarchies, monarchies, democracies, parliaments, republics, etc.  Where are the brilliant and inspired minds who can make new parts, perhaps salvaging the best of the old, and make something fantastic for the future?

We are them!  We are the solution.  Time to get out from under the hood and call the tow truck to haul off the broken-down car.  Moments to dream the dream that never was and say, “Why not!”  No more courses in how to repair the old.  Time to write the new script for a government that works for everyone and can be adapted as a turn-key model for any countries who are mired in sludge. 

As the Hopi prophesy said, we must let go of the shore and move into the flowing river and discover new banks.  Someone crashed that old car in the river and its trash has been clogging up the course of flow.  Let’s clear the debris. This is the time.  It’s why we are here!  

We can choose, delusion:

"To be frank, I think his world had vanished long before he ever entered it.  But, I will say, he certainly sustained the illusion with a marvelous grace." M. Moustafa on M. Gustafave (The Grand Budapest Hotel).  

Or the better way: "In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."  Eric Hoffer.