I dropped out of Christmas a long time ago. Now I’m no longer on anybody’s list to get socks or nightgowns or candles. Neither do I wrap packages in nice, shiny paper. And while I managed to send off parcels, they were without the wrapping paper. And I did have a wonderful present-exchange with a friend who got me great kitchen items, the parcel for Solstice didn’t ring any joyful bells.

This last season, I felt kind of disconnected until I read the story I include here. What it made me realize is that while Christmas is seriously tainted by the blurring of the natural calendar with church-imposed fables, this meaning of Santa takes me back to St. Nick, and the time of the year related to being warm and fed.

After you read the story, you, like I, might feel like Santa’s helper. The underlying meaning of giving is well represented here. This text has been the most healing email for my grinch-like atrophied holiday spirit and will help me in the years to come.

I think the most critical piece for me to organize next time is to buy the wrapping paper which I always found a kind of ecological waste. My frugal genes will just have to get over it already.

herewith:

Christmas Story

I remember my first Christmas adventure with Grandma. I was just a kid. I remember tearing across town on my bike to visit her on the day my big sister dropped the bomb: “There is no Santa Claus,” she jeered.”Even dummies know that!”

My Grandma was not the gushy kind, never had been. I fled to her that day because I knew she would be straight with me. I knew Grandma always told the truth, and I knew that the truth always went down a whole lot easier when swallowed with one of her “world-famous” cinnamon buns. I knew they were world-famous, because Grandma said so. It had to be true.

Grandma was home, and the buns were still warm. Between bites, I told her everything. She was ready for me. “No Santa Claus?” she snorted….”Ridiculous! Don’t believe it. That rumor has been going around for years, and it makes me mad, plain mad!! Now, put on your coat, and let’s go.”

“Go? Go where, Grandma?” I asked. I hadn’t even finished my second world-famous cinnamon bun. “Where” turned out to be Kerby’s General Store, the one store in town that had a little bit of just about everything. As we walked through its doors, Grandma handed me ten dollars. That was a bundle in those days. “Take this money,” she said, “and buy something for someone who needs it. I’ll wait for you in the car.” Then she turned and walked out of Kerby’s.

I was only eight years old. I’d often gone shopping with my mother, but never had I shopped for anything all by myself. The store seemed big and crowded, full of people scrambling to finish their Christmas shopping.

For a few moments I just stood there, confused, clutching that ten-dollar bill, wondering what to buy, and who on earth to buy it for.

I thought of everybody I knew: my family, my friends, my neighbors, the kids at school, the people who went to my church.

I was just about thought out, when I suddenly thought of Bobby Decker.

He was a kid with bad breath and messy hair, and he sat right behind me in Mrs. Pollock’s grade-two class. Bobby Decker didn’t have a coat. I knew that because he never went out to recess during the winter. His mother always wrote a note, telling the teacher that he had a cough, but all we kids knew that Bobby Decker didn’t have a cough; he didn’t have a good coat. I fingered the ten-dollar bill with growing excitement. I would buy Bobby Decker a coat!

I settled on a red corduroy one that had a hood to it. It looked real warm, and he would like that.

“Is this a Christmas present for someone?” the lady behind the counter asked kindly, as I laid my ten dollars down. “Yes, ma’am,” I replied shyly. “It’s for Bobby.”

The nice lady smiled at me, as I told her about how Bobby really needed a good winter coat. I didn’t get any change, but she put the coat in a bag, smiled again, and wished me a Merry Christmas.

That evening, Grandma helped me wrap the coat (a little tag fell out of the coat, and Grandma tucked it in her Bible) in Christmas paper and ribbons and wrote, “To Bobby, From Santa Claus” on it.

Grandma said that Santa always insisted on secrecy. Then she drove me over to Bobby Decker’s house, explaining as we went that I was now and forever officially, one of Santa’s helpers.

Grandma parked down the street from Bobby’s house, and she and I crept noiselessly and hid in the bushes by his front walk. Then Grandma gave me a nudge. “All right, Santa Claus,” she whispered, “get going.”

I took a deep breath, dashed for his front door, threw the present down on his step, pounded his door and flew back to the safety of the bushes and Grandma.

Together we waited breathlessly in the darkness for the front door to open. Finally it did, and there stood Bobby.

Fifty years haven’t dimmed the thrill of those moments spent shivering beside my Grandma in Bobby Decker’s bushes. That night I realized that those awful rumors about Santa Claus were just what Grandma said they were — ridiculous. Santa was alive and well and we were on his team.

I still have the Bible with the coat tag tucked inside: $19.95.

May you always have LOVE to share,

HEALTH to spare and FRIENDS that care…

And may you always believe in the magic of Santa Claus!

I love this story for its power to illustrate conditioning and damage done. The Hitler regime made a powerful imprint on the world that changed us. Antonia’s father crying out that she and her generation was lucky because we didn’t have to hate reminds us of what his obstruction (39) was to the light and joyful overabundance (55).

It is imperative to me that we change the concept and conversation from a channel as a one-thing. Channels are always comprised of two ends and it is always possible to get stuck in one or the other of the two centers involved.

It also occurred to me that there are those people who carry this imprint who are chronically not “overcapacity joyful” and rather than realize the potential built in stay stuck in the Root (being an ass for example).

Antonia’s story gives us a window into the importance of emotional awareness, which is NOT guaranteed just because there is an emotional definition.

The transit of Neptune through the gates of the Solar Plexus continue to remind us what a sacrifice we must make in order to be one humanity instead of a lot of individual egos.

Love, Zeno

Dear Zeno,

Wow thank you so much for your appreciation. I was worried a bit that I burden you with my ‘stuff’, but felt so strongly that this should be written down and shared with someone who might be understanding.

It was like a birth and a catharsis simultaniously when I wrote this down, and I felt really exhausted and relieved after it.

Yes I also feel it’s worth while sharing this with the world. It’s also part of history, it’s another facet to the story we were told in school about the German aggression of the 1930s and 40s.

And yes, the text needs editing. I didn’t care about the typos because I was so electrified when the story unfolded… or… revealed itself. (It feels like I didn’t even write it, the story wrote itself I was just the receiver who did the typing…) and yes, uncle with an u , in German it’s Onkel so i felt kind of weird to type the u for unkle.

Yes, I could feel so much empathy when you discussed the channel! It was like a healing for me to experience someone who understands this kind of suffering. … And… I learned something massively important from you: emotions can be nourishing and accepting and loving!

(Sometimes, I am really surprised that I am still alive and survived all this… But there is also a toughness inside me, a very strong survival mode…)

Thank you ever so much. This is a healing for me. I learn a lot today. And thank you for your empathy… means a lot.

I wrote three questions and comments during your call, however you either did not receive them or it seems to be a complicated process to check whether there are comments/questions?…

I just mentioned that my father did have this potential of being sublimely happy at times, and that during the last years of his life, he started facing his emotions which was like an explosion from the inside, he was very unstable for a while and nearly suicidal… He had several heavy accidents which nearly killed him, he always came out of them with enormous vitality and then… had his next accident… as if he was looking for pain and suffering and maybe, even death…

I once said to him while he was hospitalized: ‘Sometimes it feels like life is just a dream and when we die we wake up.’ – He answered that he feels this way himself and that he is prepared for death and that he is not afraid of it. (He still lived on for quite a few years after this happened.)

My father had to live in a very tortured body (from the war, one leg joint was destroyed) and suffered physical pain always. (By the way, he was a doctor and had a very remarkable career as a medical researcher and professor and chief of a big hospital complex, and as father of five lively healthy children!)

The doctor told him that his condition is a miracle and that he owes all his ability to function so well to his extremely sportive heart. I remember my father saying: My heart is the one organ that always carried me through my life. If anything is wrong with my heart, I don’t want to live anymore.

Some years later, the doctor told him that his heart is weakening and that he needs a bypass operation. My father (being a doctor himself and exactly knowing what he was doing) told his doctor that he is not willing to have the operation at this certain day but only one week later.

Then he went in his car to see a very dear friend of his, drove back home to my mother, and at two o’clock at night, his heart stopped doing the job, and he died instantly.

On the day of the postponed operation, we carried his body to the grave.

He knew exactly what he was doing: He stopped his life.

During the funeral, there were warm and soft winds locally as if his soul was saying farewell, and all visitors without exception felt that he was laughing and smiling at us from above as if he was saying: You have no idea how beautiful it is up here and I feel nearly sorry for you guys having to go on in this valley of pain and struggle.

Even today, this story brings tears to my eyes. He was such a brave and unthreatened person, but the emotions… remained unresolved… I had to do a lot of clearing work … and my sisters and brothers, too… but most of it was my heritage.

Sorry for writing so long, but I feel you allow me to write the whole story:

His brother wanted to become a doctor and my father wanted to be a photographer. When his brother died in the Russian battlefield my father (who’s Ji center is undefined, my father is born February 23rd, 1927) suddenly decided to take on the profession that his brother wanted to do!!!

When I flew back from China to Germany in 2005, I suddenly became very sick during the flight (something that never happens to me) as we were flying over the southern plains of Russia. I felt my uncle’s soul and it was coming to me. I arrived in Germany and carried his soul with me. I shared with my eldest brother who was very understanding and I heard my uncle’s voice telling me that he wants to see the mountains again. So my brother and I drove to the Alps Mountains and went for a tour there. I cried all the time.

Then on our way back to Munich, we had to pass a village but it was not possible because of festivities. We stopped and had a look: It was a mourning ceremony for the deceased in the battle field!!!! People were playing somber music and stopped at a big memorial statue: A woman holding the dying soldier in her lap!!! I was totally shock-moved and when we eventually drove on, I could not help crying all the way back to Munich. I felt a clear message from my uncle: He had died totally undignified and lonely and cold (he was driven over by a tank) and he NEEDED to die once more in a dignified way with a loving person holding him in her lap. This person was me.

Back to Munich, I ‘carried him around’ with me and showed him the city: He could not believe that so many buildings were still there after being repaired when the horror was over. He even guided me to taste a sausage specialty of Munich and delighted that this is still available today… Then gradually his soul left again … now a lot more at peace and ease with himself…

… One last word, it just ‘dawned’ on me a few days ago: We New Age people believe that we can make a change in ‘the field’ by becoming aware and standing brave in the waves of un-reflected behavior… An old friend of our family who knew my uncle well told me once that my uncle refused to shoot on anybody… driven over by a tank… I suddenly see him in the battle field, throwing away his gun, and walking towards the on-rolling tanks… TRYING TO STOP THEM hoping that they would respect him as an unarmed human being… but no…

Did you see the film when in 1989 on the Tian An Men square the tanks threatened the crowd in Peking? At one point, there was an unknown man (nobody knows who he is) with a plastic bag in his hand and he walks towards the tanks. … The tanks stop! When I saw this I was so deeply moved, maybe now I know why:

If there is any truth in that we can change the awareness field with our actions: My uncle might potentially have started the peace movement… by doing just this… As much as I cannot prove what I am saying here, as much I feel it is important to speak out and let someone know who might be interested that he might potentially have done exactly this. … If he did… with horrible results for himself and his left ones… but potentially with enormous results regarding the collective energy field of us all…

Thank you Zeno, for letting me share this… I can’t tell how important this is to me…

Thank you once more for this reading today, you have done a profound healing!

With love,

Antonia

… One last word, it just ‘dawned’ on me a few days ago: We New Age people believe that we can make a change in ‘the field’ by becoming aware and standing brave in the waves of unreflected behavior… An old friend of our family who knew my uncle well, told me once that my uncle refused to shoot on anybody… driven over by a tank… I suddenly see him in the battle field, throwing away his gun, and walking towards the onrolling tanks… TRYING TO STOP THEM hoping that they would respect him as an unarmed human being… but no…

Did you see the film when in 1998 on the Tian An Men square the tanks were crushing the crowd in Peking? At one point, there was an unknown man (nobody knows who he is) with a plastic bag in his hand and he walks towards the tanks. … The tanks stop! When I saw this I was so deeply moved , maybe now I know why:

If there is any truth in that we can change the awareness field with our actions: My oncle might potentially have started the peace movement of the 1960s… by doing just this… As much as I cannot prove what I am saying here, as much I feel it is important to speak out and let someone know who might be interested that he might potentially have done exactly this. … If he did… with horrible results for himself and his left ones… but potentially with enormous results regarding the collective energy field of us all now…

Thank you Zeno, for letting me share this… I can’t tell how important this is to me…

Thank you once more for this reading today, you have done a profound healing!

With love,

Antonia

EVENT: Channel 39-55, Antonia’s question
http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventid=25032576

Dear Zeno,

Thank you ever so much. This is a healing for me. I learn a lot today. And thank you for your empathy… means a lot.

I wrote three questions and comments during your call, however you either did not receive them or it seems to be a complicated process to check whether there are comments/questions?…

I just mentioned that my father did have this potential of being sublimely happy at times, and that during the last years of his life, he started facing his emotions which was like an explosion from the inside, he was very unstable for a while an nearly suicidal… He had several heavy accidents which nearly killed him, he always came out of them with enormous vitality and then… had his next accident… as if he was looking for pain and suffering and maybe, even death…

I once said to him while he was hospitalized: ‘Sometimes it feels like life is just a dream and when we die we wake up.’ – He answered that he feels this way himself and that he is prepared for death and that he is not afraid of it. (He still lived on for quite a few years after this happened.)

My father had to live in a very tortured body (from the war, one leg joint was destroyed) and suffered physical pain always. (By the way, he was a doctor and had a very remarkable carreer as a medical researcher and professor and chief of a big hospital complex, and as father of five lively healthy children!)

The doctor told him that his condition is a miracle and that he owes all his ability to function so well to his expremely spotive heart. I remember my father saying: My heart is the one organ that always carried my throgh my life. If anything is wrong with my heart, I don’t want to live anymore.

Some years later, the doctor told him that his heart is weakening and that he needs a pypass operation. My father (being a doctor himself and exactly knowing what he was doing) told his doctor that he is not willing to have the operation at this certain day but only one week later.

Then he went in his car to see a very dear friend of his, drove back home to my mother, and at two o’clock at night, his heart stopped doing the job, and he died instantly.

On the day of the postponed operation, we carried his body to his grave.

He knew exactly what he was doing: He stopped his life.

During the funeral, there were warm and soft winds locally as if his soul was saying farewell, and all visitors without exception felt that he was laughing and smiling at us from above as if he was saying: You have no idea how beautiful it is up here and I feel nearly sorry for you guys having to go on in this valley of pain and struggle.

Even today, this story brings tears to my eyes. He was such a brave and unthreatened person, but the emotions… remained unresolved… I had to do a lot of clean up work … and my sisters and brothers, too… but most of it was my heritage.

Sorry for writing so long , but I feel you allow me to write the whole story:

His brother wanted to become a doctor and my father wanted to be a photographer. When his brother died in the Russian battlefield my father (who’s Ji center is undefined, my fahter is born February 23rd, 1927) suddenly decided to take on the profession that his brother wanted to do!!!

When I flew back from China to Germany in 2005, I suddenly became very sick during the flight (something that never happens to me) as we were flying over the the southern planes of Russia. I felt my oncle’s soul and it was coming to me. I arrived in Germany and carried his soul with me. I shared with my eldest brother who was very understanding and I heared my oncle’s voice telling me that he wants to see the mountiains again. So my brother and I drove to the Alps mountains and went for a tour there. I cried all the time. Then on our way back to Munich, we had to pass a village but it was not possible because of festivities. We stopped and had a look: it was the mourning celebration for the deceised in the battle field!!!! People were playing somber music and stopped at a big memorial statue: A woman holding the diying soldier in her lap!!! I was totally shock-moved and when we eventually moved on, I could not help crying all the way back to Munich: I felt a clear message from my oncle; He had died totally undignified and lonely and cold (he was driven over by a tank) and he NEEDED to die once more in a dignified way with a loving person holding him in her lap. This person was me.

Back to Munich, I ‘carried him around’ with me and showed him the city: He could not believe that so many buildings were still there after being repaired when the horror was over. He even guided me to taste a sossage speciality of Munich and delighted that this is still available today… Then gradually his soul left me again … now a lot more at peace with himself…

… One last word, it just ‘dawned’ on me a few days ago: We New Age people believe that we can make a change in ‘the field’ by becoming aware and standing brave in the waves of unreflected behavior… An old friend of our family who knew my oncle well, told me once that my oncle refused to shoot on anybody… driven over by a tank… I suddenly see him in the battle field, throwing away his gun, and walking towards the onrolling tanks… TRYING TO STOP THEM

Antonia wrote me such a special story about her father who had this channel that I ended up giving a special class to address her questions and as a result, felt that I had given the first class on channels.

Right now, I’m thinking about the channels class I will continue with but with the approaching Neptune transit to the 55, this is a good start for understanding about how the energy of this channel might express itself. As this was not set up as a back and forth on my blog, I will just make separate files for each of Antonia’s entries.

40 years ago, I used to share a dance studio with a fantastic belly dancer who I always just loved. She lived high on the hill in the redwoods and made the most gorgeous costumes with rare coin bras, silk veils and coin belts. Her creativity and ability to sew truly impressed me. Over the years, we’ve kept in touch and more recently, she is my living example of having the Sun in the 18. I have had such incredible insights for how that Libra, artistic, correcting, self-critical quality can also see the good in all things compost and waste.
She told the story of having to get her septic tank pumped after being in her house for four decades, that the toilets backed up and there was a need to updating that system.
So the pumper truck came and worked for a while, but the sludge was so old and solid, though they got the top ¾ of the tank, didn’t manage to liberate the drain and so the problem returned. My friend then related how upset she was that she had let those guys take any of that “black gold” of aged sludge, but rather than hiring anyone else, climbed down into her septic tank and hauled out buckets of that sludge that she put around her trees.
After five hours, at the point of exhaustion and complete despair, she pushed through to the drain hole and was naturally very gratified. What amazed me was how she could describe this appreciation for that old “shit” and instead could see something healthy and beneficial in this socially taboo subject.
For whatever reason, we got to another totally taboo topic that my friend related to me meeting an amazing and magical wise woman who just happened to be someone who was very influential in my life when I was a young mother.
This kind of cosmic synchronicity just has to be credited, and is therefore the inspiration for my “intimate subjects” text.
In the late seventies, I had moved to Seattle for a short time. Through a series of connections, I met a woman who absolutely wowed me with her back-to-earth, Mother Gaia incarnate form. She lived outside the city, had a rustic cabin with a bubbling creek of mountain water and a 13 acre garden. She used an outdoor wood fire and the water from the creek to make tofu that was available from a local coop. I could barely imagine working so hard, but the clincher was she not only made all her son’s diapers and clothes, she also made her own buttons!
For some reason, it just blew my mind that someone would saw off rounds from an antler horn and then drill holes into them to make buttons.
We ended up friends and roommates in a project of three mothers who began a cottage industry inspired by and trained by that Earth-mother, Gaia-incarnate Bequin, making the earliest futons in Seattle. This self-employment of being a futon maker would continue and form many parts of my character over the next decades
Fast-forward to the intimate subject from my 18-Sun girlfriend. She was telling me that she’d met an incredible environmental wise woman who was on a mission to end toilet paper dependence, who could rattle off all the harmful toxins TP includes, besides the questionable use of trees and our forests. After a life-long suffering of eczema including outbreaks stemming from toilet paper use, my friend was ready to jump on the Bequin wipes solution.
So it’s a simple change to use terry-cloth little washable squares for most of our hygiene needs. Solid waste I’m not yet ready for that change, but my god, I have saved so much TP that is just a thrill. It is so benign, no smell. I started with washrags and now have received the little squares of zigzagged fabric.
Consider it! I will like to continue for young women at another point, but have to participate in our “return to the land” movement that evolving beyond toilet paper represents. It is such a radical concept to realize how deeply all things corporate have entered into our lives. One friend I had to courage to discuss this with went to Walmart, got a pile of white washrags and thanked me for sharing….. much nicer, she and I both agree. More comfortable. If I can organize a seamstress to make up a pile, I might add it as a product!! But for the moment, now that the Sun has moved into taboo- Scorpio, I am going to finish this newsletter, which I just stopped after getting discouraging feedback that this was not the most appealing topic! Relevant however.

Motors are the centers related to energy, and are attracted powerfully to getting connected to conditioning. What’s tricky is to recognize YOUR side of the connection. That means the gate in your chart that connects to another center’s gate via a channel is important for you recognize.

Rather than being irritated by the conditioning gate, about which you can do nothing effective to change its dynamic, see your side of the electro-magnetic channel and think (something like) “This is what attracts me. This is the energy of the other center that I (might or sometimes or always fight) push away.”

Realize that pushing energy away is how you are resisting your own life instead of realizing that this is what you’re designed to meet. This is what life sends you to learn about. This is an attractor in your own chart!

If you are someone with no motors, recognition is very important for you, but might be hard to get. Any time that someone tunes into you, gives you attention or energy, it is a resource that you are smart if you figure out you like it or you attract it, and shine your light and love there.

Otherwise, you might be unintentionally starving the other person by taking for granted the energy of the other as a kind of embarrassed minimizing, or false pride. If you are connected to someone who has no motors, be on the lookout for the feeling of getting sucked out. The only cure for this kind of draining out of energy is to acknowledge the energy that’s coming in the conditioning field. If the energy is connecting a motor in your chart, do your best to be respectful, appreciative and peaceful.

Disturbance in the energy field might really remind you as to the benefits in waiting.

In the last days, I’ve been in correspondence with a woman who expresses a distaste from what she considers a demeaning differentiation from those “lucky ones” with designs To Do and the “lesser mortals” with designs To Wait.

I’ve been mulling on the topic now in answer to her emails so here are a few thoughts:

First, whether you have a design To Do or To Wait, all of us do. The mode does not determine doing or not. It is the characteristic of how the energy emerges. Having a design To Wait does require an automatic reflection period, so a decision may not be immediately implemented. It’s also likely for those with designs To Wait to not be in charge of an outcome or result, though there is likely pressure put upon oneself to make things happen.

The bigger deal is the path of acceptance and in recognizing what gifts you specifically bring. When you struggle with the feeling that you are supposed to accomplish goals like Tony Robbins says, it’s valuable to check in with what your real goal or purpose is.

Activity is one healthy result in a life, or it can be a compulsive habit that doesn’t lead to ease, flow and joy. Let’s not make generalizations. Those To Do people can really run themselves and others around!