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Advice

June 2 to 9, 2011
Visible Planets: Morning: Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter   Evening: Saturn

"It’s another new moon: when the magically minded make wishes and astrologers attempt to divine this cycle’s intentions. But fates are personal. Even if a new moon chart could be forced to describe them all, no single astrologer could tell that many stories…"
                                      Dana Gerhardt @ www.mooncircles.com

Trespass2 I always pay attention to what happens to me and how I feel at the time of solar and lunar eclipses. Prophetic, ominous, auspicious or propitious, whatever the adjective, the bottom line is this: Awareness is the golden key for unlocking the mystery, magic and magnificence of eclipses. With awareness, we tap in to both the subtle and obvious, ingest the physical and metaphysical; discern, interpret and intuit.

Last week I had the great good fortune to attend the West End edition of the Talking Gourd at the Livery in downtown Norwood. The featured speaker was Amy Irvine, author of Trespass, the highly acclaimed memoir of a courageous, half-crazed coyote woman “living at the edge of the promised land” – a book of love and loss, longing and belonging in the redrock spires and pink sand washes of southern Utah. Her presentation was focused on her current work-in-progress, Terra Firma, woven together with threads of Mother Earth and Father Sky, evocative dreams and devilish demons, sacred space colliding with uncertain territory. It was a rather mystical experience, for me, the beginning of a shamanistic quest. I could feel it in my bones. The eclipse window opened, and I jumped right in.

02 June, 2011 /
[click "Play" to hear Dr. Hokemeyer's discussion about infidelity]

 

By Dr. Paul Hokemeyer

Dr. Paul Hokemeyer Dr. Hokemeyer is a nationally recognized expert on Eastern philosophies, relationships, and emotional healing. A Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, he holds a PhD in psychology, as well as a doctorate in the law. A part-time Telluride resident, Dr. Hokemeyer is based in the New York City office of the Caron Treatment Centers. He is also a weekly contributor to "The Dr. Oz Show," CNN’s "Headline News," and other media outlets, including "Good Morning America," "truTV," and "Oprah Radio." His new column, Shrink Rap, is scheduled to appear at least bi-monthy on Thursdays on Telluride Inside... and Out.

Infidelity is back making international headlines and it's all over the blogosphere. For months, we had to endure the sordid details of Tiger Woods’ sex life. Then it was Sandra Bullock’s humiliations. Prior to those revelations, the buzz was about all the married politicians stepping out. Now it's The Arnold and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the disgraced head of the International Monetary Fund.

02 June, 2011 /

May 26 to June 2, 2011
Visible Planets: Morning: Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter  Evening: Saturn

Ecliptic Awakening, Experience and Catharsis

Telluride Falls I’m a big fan of “eclipse windows” – the days and weeks leading into, during and following the exact celestial alignment of the Sun and Moon at the time of solar and lunar eclipses. I’ve had some of my most devastating and ecstatic moments during these days and weeks. I’ve also watched the world experience and move through powerful events – the death of Princess Diana and Mother Teresa in the same week, G.H.W. Bush’s 1991 invasion of Iraq and the dramatic passing of pop icon Michael Jackson – that constellate the energies and emotions of the collective psyche and, ultimately, mandate transformation. The imperative process of awakening, experience and metamorphosis is cathartic. We face issues we might otherwise ignore, are forced to examine situations and conditions of people and places near and far, ingest data, witness reactions and shape-shift through the individual and collective deepening of our understanding and compassion for life here on planet Earth.

28 May, 2011 /

May 19 to 26, 2011
Visible Planets: Morning: Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter  Evening: Saturn

Battle Zones, Gangs, Practical Needs and Personal Responsibilities

Greenhouse3 I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’ve been traveling through a metaphysical battle zone lately. I feel grateful and blessed that I have a home that is not in foreclosure. I don’t live in a flood zone, on a fault line or in a location subject to tornados, tsunamis or hurricanes. I don’t live close to a nuclear power plant. I’m able to somehow manage to pay our monthly bills, buy good, nutritious food and prepare it in the style of the slow food movement. We’re in the process of building a greenhouse to extend our painfully short high-altitude growing season and I’m currently nurturing tomato and basil starts for my luscious, delicious culinary future. I do work that I love, maintain a daily spiritual practice, I’m healthy and happy and living each and every moment of my precious life. Bottom line: my life is good, and yet, inside and outside, the battles rage.

20 May, 2011 /

[click "Play", Dr. Paul Hokemeyer talks with Susan about meanness on TV]

 

 

By Dr. Paul Hokemeyer

Dr. Paul Hokemeyer Dr. Hokemeyer is a nationally recognized expert on Eastern philosophies, relationships, and emotional healing. A Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, he holds a PhD in psychology, as well as a doctorate in the law. A part-time Telluride resident, Dr. Hokemeyer is based in the New York City office of the Caron Treatment Centers. He is also a weekly contributor to "The Dr. Oz Show," CNN’s "Headline News," and other media outlets, including "Good Morning America," "truTV," and "Oprah Radio." His new column, Shrink Rap, is scheduled to appear at least bi-monthy on Thursdays on Telluride Inside... and Out.

If I see one more angry, surgically altered middle-aged woman screaming at another angry, surgically altered middle-aged woman, I am going to throw my television in to the Hudson River. Isn't there enough meanness, narcissism and  in the world as it is. Why glamorize such hollow values?

13 May, 2011 /

May 12 to 19, 2011
Visible Planets: Morning: Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter 
Evening: Saturn

Aries Courage & Will + Taurus Earth Beauty and Bounty

Fool The recent alignment of personal planets Mercury (mind), Venus (love & money), Mars (motive and ego) with generous Jupiter (beliefs and spirit) and revolutionary Uranus (freedom and liberation) in primal Aries (attention ME!) has given us all a series of lightening-bolt jolts and radical new awakenings via our personal and collective relationships and experiences. And yet, it all comes down and back to – guess who? Me, myself and I. No matter what we do or where we go, we are the center of our own personal universe, viewing life from our own perspective, filtering events through our own optical lens and physical, emotional senses. People and planets rotate around us, throwing rocks or tossing treats our way, appearing and disappearing like ships in a proverbial storm. Sometimes, we can see them coming a long way off. Others times, they pop up suddenly, “out of the blue.” Amidst the chaos, drama, beauty, grace, trauma, joy and mystery of life, we are and will always be our own unique and individual selves, captive souls in physical bodies, ethereal spirits in material realities, living and breathing in the here and now.

12 May, 2011 /

May 5 to 12, 2011
Visible Planets: Morning: Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter  Evening: Saturn

“It is known that all bodies such as the Sun and its satellites are charged bodies and are surrounded by a magnetic field. In any magnetic body having two poles (the Sun and its satellites are such bodies), the magnetic currents circulate from the north to the south pole, become neutral at each 90 degrees and reach a maximum intensity at each 45 degrees.”
    T.O. McGrath in his book Timing Business Activity and the Sun

Astro Wheel One of the year’s four cross-quarter days – days halfway between the solstices and equinoxes – takes place this week on May 5th @ 15º Taurus – Cinco de Mayo. In the Northern Hemisphere this marks the midpoint of our seasonal spring. In the neo-pagan year it heralds the beginning of summer. The Celtic calendar honors this time with the holiday of Beltane, one of the eight fire festivals of their year. In all cases and calendars, it is a time of fertility, celebration and reverence for the Mother Earth. The sleeping seeds and dormant life of winter’s slumber, awakened by the primal thrust of early springtime, nurtured by melting snows and sleeting rain, have taken root and are sprouting with renewed vigor and fresh life. 

May Day and maypoles, Mother’s Day and a plethora of flowers, brunches and cards are what we associate with the first week of May in America today. Garden centers are busy and gardeners are out in their gardens, cleaning, raking, tilling and planting. We touch the soil, breathe the air and feel the energetic magnitude of this powerfully charged point in our seasonal solar year, whether we realize it consciously or not. We are electromagnetic bodies and are subject - as are all electromagnetic bodies – to the push and pull of electromagnetism. And the point of maximum electromagnetic intensity in the Earth’s orbit around the Sun takes place when the Earth is exactly halfway through the zodiac signs of Aquarius, Taurus, Leo and Scorpio, on the four cross-quarter days of the natural year. This is when the Earth and Sun are at the point of 45º maximum intensity in relation to each other and the Earth/Sun is at 15º in the fixed signs of the Tropical Zodiac.

05 May, 2011 /

April 28 to May 5, 2011
Visible Planets: Morning: Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter  Evening: Saturn

A self-fueled, self-indulgent, self-obsessed Aries rant...

I’m going to make this short. After all, with most of the planets in self-fueled Aries, why not be totally selfish and self-indulgent? [Aries]

Aries Suddenly I don’t have patience for others and I’m consumed with all the things I have to do. [Aries] Everything seems to be an interruption to my agenda. [also Aries] On the other end of the proverbial scale [Libra], I’m feeling the heavy weight of transiting Saturn [in Libra] conjunct my Sun and natal Saturn. S.O.B.E.R. - son-of-a-bitch, everything’s real. [Saturn] It’s a veritable balancing act [Libra] of time [Saturn], energy [Aries], money and resources. [Venus-ruled, and therefore also associated with Libra] And I can also feel the stress of currently transiting Pluto in Capricorn [ruled by Saturn] as it squares the Aries/Libra [self/others] polarity on its journey of expose and expulsion through the mass terrain of global economic realities, government bodies and ruling hierarchies. [Saturn/Pluto/Capricorn] Social, political and economic establishments and traditions [Saturn/Capricorn/Libra] are crumbling [Pluto] under the overwhelming pressure and power of evolutionary change [Pluto] and we feel it personally [Aries] as well as in our relationships [Libra].

Libra And so what do we [I] do? Feel irritable, restless and discontent. A little overwhelmed by all the things I can’t control – which, let’s face it, is just about everything! – and I find myself getting angry and wanting to act out. [Aries…] Rumblings from deep inside [Pluto] remind me that as much as I might like to think inner peace [Libra] is a choice, I realize – for the zillionth time – that it’s a practice. [Saturn] It’s time to take care of what’s right in front of me, focus on the present and simply do the best I can, one day and one moment at a time.

How’s that for a self-obsessed Aries rant? Onward Cosmic Traveler, forever moving forward…

29 April, 2011 /

[click "Play" to hear Dr. Paul Hokemeyer's conversation with Susan about sexting]

 

 

By Dr. Paul Hokemeyer 

Hokemeyer Dr.  Paul Hokemeyer is a nationally recognized expert on Eastern philosophies, relationships, and emotional healing. A Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, he holds a PhD in psychology, as well as a doctorate in the law. A part-time Telluride resident, Dr. Hokemeyer is based in the New York City office of the Caron Treatment Centers. He is also a weekly contributor to "The Dr. Oz Show," CNN’s "Headline News," and other media outlets, including "Good Morning America," "truTV," and "Oprah Radio." His new column, Shrink Rap, is scheduled to appear at least bi-monthy on Thursdays on Telluride Inside... and Out.


My mother frequently says she doesn’t know if she could have survived raising a teenage girl: with my bother and me, she only had to worry about two penises. With a girl, she’d have to worry about thousands. Now imagine my mother’s anxiety if her worry about her sons' sexual behavior were compounded by a technology she could barely comprehend. What if she had to worry about a new trend in teen flirting. What if she had to worry about sexting?

28 April, 2011 /

April 21 to 28, 2011
Visible Planets: Morning: Venus  Evening: Saturn

Mother, Father, sister, brother...

Mother&Child Families are funny things, and we all have them. And mothers. Even abandoned children have mothers - somewhere, somehow – on the planet, dead or alive – a woman carried a child in her womb and gave birth to new life. Just like the Mother Earth - from life to life, from dust to dust…

Springtime is the preeminent time of birth in the Northern Hemisphere, and the Christian holiday of Easter has been branded as the time of “resurrection.” It’s no mistake that Easter and springtime coincide. The pagan rites of spring were supplanted by the Catholic’s holy rituals of their savior’s crucifixion, entombment and miraculous return. For me, spring and Easter evoke memories of childhood, my Mother and my family. I am filled with the poignant emotions of joy and sorrow, hope and wonder in the recurring seasons, the eternal cycles of birth and death. The gentle wind, the greening grass and the ever-present natural phenomena of change stir something deep within - questions and quest, combined with a sense of acceptance, humility and grace.

22 April, 2011 /