Monday’s Poem: Seed of the New Human
Seed of the New Human
The seed holds the infinite,
All future generations of
Its kind within its
Hard shell.
The hard shell must burst
To give way to the sprout,
The shoot, the stalk, the
Leaves and flowers and seeds.
The brain holds the infinite,
All future thoughts and
Possibilities within the
Neural nets of habit.
Old patterns must burst
To give way to the thought,
The path, the net, the
Impossible, the New Human.

©2013 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
PS: To start 2013 off with incredible guidance from The Divine Feminine you can get the 8 recordings Rosemary made at the end of 2012 during her Wisdom of the Week (WOW) calls.Get them here.
Yoga and Diet
I worked with a new yoga teacher tonight using a style unfamiliar to me. This teacher, (whom I’ve known for 30 years!) has been studying, practicing and teaching Svaroopa® Yoga for the past nine years. He is a gentle teacher and the yoga is a somehow gentle and at the same time strenuous approach to “strengthening the core” and aligning the spine. And the real result is a “stilling of the mind” – the goal of any yoga and certainly one of the reasons I am interested in continuing to study this style and approach.
I have practiced yoga off and on for more than 30 years. And I have been more disciplined recently working through a morning routine which also includes Qigong. These practices are enjoyable; I am feeling good about the stretching of my sometimes tight body and the easy motions through the Qi-field as I move through the 5-element form of qigong. So, why a new practice?
Do you ever feel stuck in a routine? Do you sometimes wish things would change, that something new would come in to shake things up? Or maybe you are reaching to take a next, deeper step. I’m feeling like this at the beginning of 2013; and this year is all about the process of the transformation, right? How do we expect to transform by sticking with our customary routines?
I may have found a practice that is going to take me deeper. Even in this first introduction I felt my body release, relax and go deep. More importantly, I felt my mind quiet. I don’t think I have experienced such a rapid alignment of body and mind into that space of peace and silence since I was first initiated into TM (transcendental meditation) in 1969!
And here’s where diet comes in and links back to my post yesterday about that mirror my vegan friends hold up for me!
Before my class tonight Rosemary and I had a quick bite, early dinner, at a Chinese bistro. One of my favorite dishes there is a spicy Korean dish that I usually get with beef. True to form I ordered that about two hours before class. And it was delicious. I didn’t even finish the serving, packing up the last bit for a snack later, maybe after yoga. On our way home I remarked to Rosemary that I had thought to eat light, remain vegan for the whole day leading up to this new class. But habit tripped me up as I ordered my usual.
And it was OK. But I did wonder as I relaxed into the asanas if I could have released even more if my early dinner had been lighter. Next week I’ll be more conscious of my food intake before class!
But is it only before class and other similar activities that I’ll be “more conscious”? Isn’t my goal in life to grow in consciousness at all times? Isn’t this the goal for humanity? That mirror is reflecting some serious thought-forms that are beginning to press back, hard.
Rosemary and I have discussed vegetarianism over many of our 40 years of knowing one another. We have both curtailed our meat intake but we have not eliminated it; and we both enjoy a moderate level of dairy. Rosemary, as an incredible intuitive, looks for the “light content” in the food she prepares and eats. If I take this literally I would choose foods as close to the sunlight as possible. This would mean eating a lot of green vegetables, right? And I do love the greens! But isn’t grass-fed beef only one step removed from the sunlight of green grass?
My dilemma remains. I am not ready to go vegan. But I am certainly thinking about it. I have a lot to think about!
I do know I like Svaroopa Yoga. And I do know that I can go deeper in that practice if my digestive tract is clearer and lighter. So, at least one day a week I’ll be vegan.
Monday’s Poem; and the I Ching for the Month
I have two offerings for today to start your week and your “moonth” as the New Moon from this past Friday begins to swell into our consciousness. First Monday’s Poem:
I wrote this as a reminder of three important virtues I want to hold firmly in mind as I work to transform my too often negative and troublesome emotions to these virtues to lift my consciousness and grow a healthier attitude.
Love, Forgiveness, Gratitude
Three acts for 2013:
Love, where it all begins
And ends.
The circle of everything
Turns with the tides
As the Moon loves down.
Forgiveness, in the middle,
The hinge.
It all turns on this act
Swinging round and round
As a gateless gate for passage.
Gratitude, the end,
No end.
Turning about the center
Where it all rests
As we give thanks and praise.
Love, Forgiveness, Gratitude:
Grace.
©2013 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
The I Ching Gua I cast for the next four weeks, the last month before the Chinese New Year, February 10, is an interesting one. Using my yarrow stalks I cast five yin yao, all 8s, before I cast the final yang yao, a 7. The hexagram looks like this:
This is Bo and using Alfred Huang’s The Complete I Ching it means “Falling Away.” The lower trigram is Earth or Kun and the upper trigram is Mountain or Gen. So we have the mountain resting on a stack of yin lines which is pretty unstable. Think of a landslide as the mountain tumbles down to the low lands.
The Decision of this Gua is:
Falling Away.
Unfavorable to have somewhere to go.
For those of you interested in the I Ching you can pursue the meaning of this gua farther as you will with your trusted references. Here’s my take on the gua and the timing of it:
This is a good time to go inside, look inward for stability. This is the last month before the New Year. It is a good time to seek stability in this unstable time. Clean up, clean out, get organized. Sweep away the decaying underpinnings and get ready for the year of the Snake.
Contemplate all of those things that are not working. Let them go. Meditate on new things that might work better and bring some new stability. The mutual gua of Bo is Kun – Earth over Earth, Responding, Receiving. Again, look to receive some inner guidance.
Note also there are no changing lines in this gua. So the situation is stagnant. Again the message is to wait it out and seek inner guidance.
This is my interpretation of this gua for me at this time. It may or may not apply to you and your situation or the times themselves. But as our government seems locked in turmoil and stagnation this just might be an appropriate gua for others. In any case it is always good to go inside to seek guidance.
And this mid-winter time is a great time to just be with what is.

PS: To start 2013 off with incredible guidance from The Divine Feminine you can get the 8 recordings Rosemary made at the end of 2012 during her Wisdom of the Week (WOW) calls. Get them here.
Old Moon-New Moon
Are you feeling heavy these past few days? It feels to me as if I’m walking through a cloud with weights all over my body. No, I’m not really ill, although I do have some mild aches and pains here and there. I’ve been up, out and about taking care of others in the family who are also feeling this weight. What’s going on?
Is this the mid-winter doldrums? The post-holiday blues? The weather is actually reasonably nice here in Maryland as I write this Thursday afternoon; the Sun has been out and the temperature reached into the 50s! And yet there’s this drag to the day.
Oh, right! The Moon is very old, dying as I write and nearly conjunct the Sun. To give you exact numbers, I am writing at 4:41 pm EST. The Moon is 8 degrees Capricorn and closing fast on the Sun at 20 degrees 49 minutes Capricorn. If you could see the Moon now it would be 1% visible, but it is so close to the Sun we can’t really see it with a naked eye (expect just before dawn on the Eastern horizon).
And as you read this (assuming you read it the moment I post it) the Moon is just now brand-new. It conjuncts the Sun exactly at 2:45:17 pm EST. And then it begins to move away from conjunction with the Sun and is born anew. Yay! We should begin to feel the lightness return. And as you look to the clear western sky at Sunset in about 3 days you’ll see the baby crescent peaking over the horizon. From there, of course, it will grow to full over the next two weeks.
I have been aware of the Moon for as long as I can remember. As a kid riding in the back of my parents’ car at night I would follow the Moon as the Moon seemed to follow us. I loved the play of peak-a-boo with the Moon as we drove. And in deep clear Wisconsin winters I would watch the phases in the brilliantly lit country sky of my youth.
And now I am acutely aware of the Moon and her phases each month (moonth). And if I forget about her, especially around this time and full Moon time, she is the first to remind me with her tug on the waters of my body. Yes, we feel the Moon just as the oceans feel her pull; we are, after all, more than half water (the human body is about 60 to 70% water!). As the tides ebb and flow with the Moon’s courses and phases so too do our bodies.
As with everything awareness is the first step in sensing, working with and balancing our inner tidal actions. Beyond tuning in to the Moon and her activities here are some things I do to work with her energy:
• For the “dying” Moon as she wanes to darkness, as we just experienced, I offer up things to her. I release emotions, I let go of limiting beliefs, I even give her little gifts, offerings to be shared with birds or other creatures. The key words are “release that which no longer serves.” And this makes room for something new to come into my life.
• Just as the Moon is new, as it is today, I cast an I Ching gua to determine what the energies coming in with the new Moon will feel like and what my preparation for and use of the energies might be.
• During the waxing phases of the Moon, from now for the next two weeks, I work with the Moon’s energies pulling in newness: fresh ideas, new beliefs, and I work with my commitments and resolutions. It’s a wonderful energetic time. “Welcome in the New.”
• And then the downward slide of the waning Moon begins again. Energies are still high and I use them, but I also begin looking toward another weak Moon and consider what I may need to purge for this next cycle.
These are my approaches. There are many ways to work with the Moon. The key is to think about this major body in our sky and how it influences the planet and us as creatures under her smile.
How does the Moon affect you? Happy New Moon!




