I wrote this post on 2/11/2014, and I’ve already reblogged it. Although slightly outdated with the references to melting starfish and toxic snow, the overall message holds true. Whatever your politics, whatever you THINK is going on in the world right now, it seems like a good time to remind everyone:
In Starhawk’s novel, The Fifth Sacred Thing, two vastly different worlds vie for control. In mundane terms: a utopian, earth-loving, community-oriented, individual honoring society that values freedom and the sacred fights for survival against corporate fascism, religious, financial, and soul oppression, hypocrisy, and the Police State — a culture’s unprocessed Shadow Side made manifest.
In magical realist terms:
“Doña Elena used to say that there was the Good Reality, El Mundo Bueno, literally the Good World, and the Bad Reality, El Mundo Malo, and they were always vying with each other. In the Good Reality you have a mild headache; in the Bad Reality you have a fatal brain disease. In the Good Reality, you catch hold of the rail as your foot slips; in the Bad Reality, you miss, slide down the stairs, and break your neck.
“We walk in the Good Reality as if we were treading the thin skin on warm milk. It’s always possible to break through and drown. …
“There is a hopeful side to Doña Elena’s teaching. … Even in El Mundo Malo, the Good Reality is always just on the other side of the surface of things. If you can learn to reach and pull yourself through, you can make miracles.” (Starhawk, The Fifth Sacred Thing, page 44)
When I first read these words, I immediately recognized their profound truth. I have witnessed this dynamic so many times during Medical Intuitive sessions when someone inquires about an intense physical issue that could go either way. In these cases, I explain that the outcome is not set: on one hand, those tumors could reveal themselves as stage 3 cancer and the person uses this illness as a rapid and socially acceptable way to “check out” of the misery they’ve been feeling without the stigma of suicide; on the other hand, the person could reach across the veil and reclaim all the reasons they want to live, all the goodness that longs to express itself through them. If they reach across that veil and pull themselves into the goodness, align themselves with that alternate reality, then the test will show those tumors to be benign or even non-existent. Continue reading