Year of Yellow Empress Ox 2009

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1. Internal Alchemy book edited by Livia Kohn:                                                                  Chapter  by Michael Winn on Daoist Internal Alchemy in the West,

2. Journal Daoist Studies vol. 2: Winn essay on “Daoist Methods of Dissolving the Heart-Mind”

3. Chinese Astrology and Feng Shui Center – Upgrades with new ebooks and distant learning CEU courses for acupuncturists should be online in February.

4. Feb. 27 – March 8, 2009 in Brazil: Sexual Vitality Qigong weekend workshop and Sun-Moon Alchemy retreat – just after Carnival. Space still available. Contact: Eduardo Alexander edu.alexander@gmail.com

5. Holland Kan & Li retreats in March are sold out, sorry no late signups.

6. March 28-29: Fusion 1: Cultivating “Original Feeling” in the Emotional Body            in Asheville. Register with my office: Jan Gillespie healingtaousa@bellsouth.net  or call 888 999 0555

7. April 3 & 4: Inner Smile (evening) and Primordial Qigong (day long).                               NY Open Center 212 219-2527

Never too late to sign up for the China Dream Trip May 8 -24, 2009.

Our mission is to “drink all the Chi in China”.

Please email me if you  are even thinking about coming. Airfares may rise.  No-interest financing available.

Full itinerary and links to China photo pages.

www.healingdao.com/chinatrip2009.html

Bagua Pavillion at the Lao Tzu temple at Louguantai, where Lao Tzu is said to have transmitted the Tao Te Ching.

Summer Retreats: 25 Amazing opportunities to transform yourself deeply!

www.HealingTaoRetreats.com

Wu Zhongxian, who teaches a Qigong & Calligraphy retreat at Heavenly Mountain, recharging his soul crystal….

This giant amethyst crystal was brought from Brazil. A number of Taoists have been reported missing for some days after meditating in its field. But all have lived to tell the tale. If you are up for the challenge of entering this amazing portal, come visit this summer!

ps. The this is one of two giant crystals. As powerful as they are, the summer retreats are far more powerful – we have amongst the most talented faculty in the West.

4707 Year of the Yellow Empress Ox (aka. Yin or Female Earth Ox):

In Asian culture, the Ox, a symbol of benevolence, is revered as one of humanity’s most valuable helpers – and a source of great wisdom. The Ox is the animal best suited for getting things done, it finds a groove to plow and works until the job is complete. Ox does the heavy lifting – it pulls the plow that turns over humanity’s old karma.

Ox types are said to be great in organizing. They are  honest, patient, persevering, reliable and logical, which is why people go to them for advice. Negative traits: stubborn, narrow minded, possessive, dogmatic, intolerant, materialistic.

Ox Ruling Hours: 1 – 3 am (good time to meditate). Ox Season & Month: Winter & January

Ox is similar to western astrology Earth sign of Capricorn with some Taurus qualities

This Ox Year began with the Tiger lunar month on Feb. 4, 2009, confusing because Chinese New Year was Jan. 26. The time window between them (divergent  lunar and solar-seasonal calculations) is considered a “double luminous’ (li chun) opening.

This lengthy changeover period from Rat to Ox zodiacal animal was neatly framed by lunar and solar eclipses, making the start of the Ox Year a temporary void space where creative shifts happen. Those shifts can be positive or negative, depending on your personal alignment and intention. From western astrology viewpoint, Feb. 4 has the unusual Saturn-Uranus opposition that marked Nov. 4th election day that put Obama into power. Eclipses and powerful oppositions portend 2009 Ox Year will be one of continuing radical change.

In the Tang Dynasty (618 A.D.), Chinese astrologers moved the center point of the sky to the Sun to develop a new prediction system without using any distant stars. Since that time, the Chinese astrology  began to use the zodiac sign of people’s Birth DAY to represent the person. Because of this, modern Chinese still use the same character  for day and sun. If you want to know the influential element on your birthday, use the free Astrology Reading on my site to find your “celestial day stem”, the controller of your personality.

If you want to go deeper into Chinese astrology, I recommend you download  David Twicken’s e-Book on Introduction to 4 Pillars Chinese Astrology to explain your chart. It will also enrich your understanding of yin-yang and 5-phase theory in your qigong and Tao meditation practice. More of David’s  ebooks on other astrology and feng shui systems will be posted in the next few weeks.

If you buy the 4 Pillars ebook, we’ll manually send you a FREE 120 page e-Book on Feng Shui for Modern  Spaces also written by David, who is one of the top contemporary masters of Taoist cycles and feng shui systems. Your free Chinese astrologyreading and the ebook are at::  www.healingdao.com/astrologycenter.html

Note: once you’ve used the Free Astrology reading to determine your Day Stem/ perosnality controller, my rat year earth analysis still applies:

“Since this year is dominated by the Earth phase, it will trend to oppress/control someone whose Day Stem is Water. It nourishes someone whose Day Stem is Earth itself or Metal (the “daughter”of earth), and empowers someone whose Day Stem is Wood (controls Earth). Mixed year for Fire types.

Please don’t get freaked out if your Day Stem is Water! Best solution: do a lot of qigong and alchemical meditation to balance out all five elements and strengthen your inner earth. You will be able to smooth out the cycle. Humans are not helpless, they can creatively change the influence of larger fate cycles. Key is not over-reacting to imbalancing external forces, but instead responding to your inner strengths.”

Obama himself is born an Ox, the element controlling his personality is earth, and he is coming into power in an Earth Ox year. He is the perfect leader to model the virtue of the Ox, which is a feeling of trust in Ox’s power of earthy perseverance. The Ox’s strength is gathered through unity and courage to face the hard task.

But most folks have it backward; Obama is not the Ox who will lead us to prosperity. In reality, if he is wise, he will allow himself to be led by the Ox. Obama is a small ox riding the big Ox of the USA (more on the financial implications of this below) which is riding the even bigger Ox of Planet Earth.

Only time will tell if Obama is a true Ox-sage, showing us how to ride smiling through this “Time of Troubles”, a time the ancients predicted would come and it is finally here. Just knowing that will help you get through it – it is not your personal difficulty, it is the collective challenge facing humanity.

The financial tsunami is just the tip of the iceberg. Hiding beneath the melting iceberg is a healthcare tsunami, a retirement tsunami for baby boomers, and an environmental crisis tsunami – all just waves in the ongoing spiritual crises facing humanity. The “Time of Troubles” is best seen as a time of clearing away of old material patterns so a new wave of spiritual consciousness can embody.  Celebrate your Troubles as essential growth, we are all soldiers of Humanity, plowing the field this year with our Ox determination.

A famous image of Lao Tzu has him riding backwards on the rump of an Ox, a deep smile on his face. Why is Lao Tzu smiling? Because he TRUSTS the Ox to take him where he needs to go. He is not driving the Ox or leading it or pretending he knows where the earth-ox is headed. Lao tzu sits backward on the Ox to reveal that he totally surrendered to where the higher intelligence of the Earth/Ox is taking him.

The Ox knows where it is going, even if we humans don’t. Things may look bad from Lao Tzu’s perspective as he looks back from the ass of the Ox over the ruins of the world recently passed, but in reality it is auspicious. That’s why Lao Tzu is smiling and enjoying the ride and the sure power of the Ox. Can we emulate the smiling Ox-sage in our difficult times?

Some of us will feel like we are being financially gored by the Ox’s sharp horns or trampled under its hooves as it moves inexorably on its path. Outbursts of irrational violence and mind boggling sudden earth changes are marks of a temperamental ox-beast year (more on Earth disasters below). What to do?

For starters, consider sending a free copy of my e-Book “Way of the Inner Smile: Tao Path to Self-Acceptance and Inner Peace” to any friend in trouble. Just type in their email address on homepage of www.HealingTaoUSA.com.

Regaining inner peace is the first step to sanity in what is rapidly becoming a kind of schizophrenic reality, with material structures collapsing daily as new spiritual structures simultaneously replace them. Both realities co-exist side by side. But many people are stuck in only the physical half of this reality. Pain is the fastest way to rip off the mask of spiritual denial, unfortunately.

The Ox is the slowest moving of the 12 zodiac animals, and is a symbol of the earth itself. The fact we are also in a “yin earth” phase (of the five phases) means 2009 is a “double earth” year. This amplifies the power of this Ox to make changes, but a double element can also portend struggle within itself. The earth element’s higher self is symbolized by Saturn, the yellow planet, known mythically in Chinese culture as the Yellow Emperor. Hence the earth element is associated with color yellow and is considered imperial. This year she’s yin, an Empress.

The Yellow Empress Ox in her full royal splendeur

So 2009 can be seen as the Yellow Empress riding the Ox of Saturn, moving on a slow 28.5 year cycle as Saturn “oversees” the faster moving planets to make sure they are doing their job properly. What is the job of the planetary beings? To shape the stream of souls flowing in through the Sun, to sculpt new soul patterns needed to keep planet Earth and Humanity evolving.

Saturn is a schoolmaster and a reality tester; it’s pain and suffering are necessary to highlight human resisitance and stimulate soul growth in this Earth school. We are all spirits who signed up to be en-souled, first passing through the Sun and Saturn in order to physically board the beautiful spinning merry-go-round of Earth and dance to its enchanting music…..remember?

I asked my I Ching guides, whom I’ve been talking to for 30 years, what their general advice was for the Year of the Ox. i got exactly the same advice it gave me when I asked for personal yearly guidance: #24, Fu, Returning. Earth Above, Thunder Below.

From Stephen Karcher’s Total I Ching, I summarize the advice. (You may order the $14. book by calling 888 999 0555 or emailing healingtaousa@bellsouth.net)

Love and Spirit return after a difficult time. Time for renewal and rebirthing. Re-establish relationships. Leave the complicated, return to the simple.

Ancient glyph: footsteps leaving the city.

A ritual return to a paradise time. Emerge from death and the underworld Ghost River. Seek the purity of Original Feeling.

The Scholar says: The old situation has been stripped away. Thunder in the Earth = be open to new ideas. Let Kings emerge without pressure. People will suggest mutually profitable projects. The strong and firm will endure.

The Shaman advises: offer service at the Earth Altar (= serve the planet in the way best suited to you).

Painted Roof Gable, Laoshan Temple. Lao Tzu Rides his Ox,                                                                   followed by his Immortal Child as attendant carrying the peaches of immortalitiy.

Money is the most powerful illusion on the planet. Its sudden worldwide destruction/deflation is designed to bring the world to it knees by Dark (False Yin) forces that seek the permanent elimination of individual will. When you realize the mantra “I am not my money”, you can awaken and standup, and start living.

When you are stripped of your money, it exposes all that is left: your power to love. Wealth can enslave you, it got many addicted to the greed of leverage. Why is excess leverage harmful? It disconnects you from cause & effect, which defines your core responsibility as a human being. It allowed all those bankers and mortgage brokers and buyers and contractors and suppliers – everyone in the system – to deny responsibility for those billion of liar loans that inflated the bubble to its bursting point…..

I’ve lost huge money twice – once in 1987 after Black Monday, and again in 1996 trying to trade derivatives. Those derivatives cost me $750,000. in hard earned profits from a decade of business (not selling qigong DVDs!).  The lesson I learned: invest in what your soul feels true alignment with – not on empty money-making schemes.  I had the intention to use the profits for spiritual purposes, but that wasn’t enough to attract support from the Life Force. It still detected a greedy under current, a disconnect from cause and effect in my life.

2008 was year of the Mask of Denial being ripped forcibly off the collective face of society. 2009 is year of individual acceptance of that reality and trying to fathom what it will mean. Not nearly as dramatic as 2008 Rat Year on the surface, but heavy drama still being played out in the psyche. How is the financial drama related to our spiritual drama?

Here’s the equation:

1. Financial system bubble = inflated external net-worth. The bigger our obsession with money, the greater is the collective denial of our lack of personal self-worth.

2. Financial collapse = removing the artificial mask made of money, so we can feel our true face beneath it.

Feeling in one’s heart is what radiates one’s worth out to the world, not one’s financial net worth.  Remember – you cannot take your money with you. Only the spiritual essence of your soul and its refinement is portable across the boundary of death.

Spiritual cultivation is the ONLY long term investment strategy that works, ie. you take it with you to other dimensions. Everything else gets recycled in this dimension of Nature’s endless transformations.The only ultimately important things are those that are vibrationally fine enough to pass through the veil of death. The essence of this Life’s experiences is the earth-lesson gift you can take back to your Greater Self..

All those New agers who were trying to use the faddish “The Secret” to become multi-millionaires overnight were participating in that bubble of self-denial. In this cycle, you must offer real value in order to attract real wealth and feel true self-worth. The value of your being is inherent, it just has to be claimed internally. Then it will be mirrored externally. There are plenty of opportunities to create, as always, and its especially immportant to tap that creativity in the worst of financial times. But there is no gimmick – just exchange of real value (work/ideas/love) for value (money/appreciation/satisfaction).

The greatest danger in this cycle? Widespread fear and depression, fed by the dark side, which spreads a feeling of hopelessness.

Ox’s virtue of individual trust and persistence is what defeats the darkness and collective depression. Feel your fear, and ride the Ox through it until it changes into a useful feeling that transforms your situation.

There is an age-old battle between those using fear to control and dominate, and those embracing physicality with love and respecting the free will of all beings. Events on the surface are not what they appear. Just as 911 looked tragic from the outside, but inside it opened the global heart of humanity. So will the economic hardship of many in this Time of Troubles open the hearts of others. Love holds open the space of compassion, forgiveness, compassion….

Inner Smile is a powerful and simple tool – share it with those who are suffering. Connecting to the seat of one’s soul in the deep heart is the key to over coming the depression and suffering of the mind.

Two traps to avoid. One, don’t fall into trap of Complacency or  its Indifference: “The recession is all over now, we can go back to the way things were”.

Two, don’t fall into the trap of Fear and its Hopelessness: “I am a victim, I cannot do anything about losing my old lifestyle and money, I’m caught in a hopeless Depression”.

Lao Tzu rides the Earth Ox. (Ceramic. Private collection, Michael Winn)

I will start with Finances, because it such front page news. Remember, this annual reading is not a hard prediction, as this time cycle is being co-created by unpredictable humans. Broad knowledge of a coming cycle merely enhances our free will options during that cycle.

Ox and Earth and Saturn are all slow-moving and unstoppable. Ox is traditionally seen as an auspicious year financially for those who work hard. So how could we have change more radical than the watery Rat with its turbulence? Rat was in a “yang earth” phase, which got amplified by higher forces. This caused the mountain of yang earth to explode like a volcano on the financial landscape.

Think of this year’s “yin earth” as the valley below that volcano, a valley filling up with the financial and psychic debris from the explosion. The yin earth here is also being pumped up by cosmic forces, but its impact will be more on the hidden infrastructure of a  slowly emerging new reality. The Ox ploughs under the fallout from Rat as fertilizer for a new reality that is growing in the valley. Will you feel buried by the debris, or become a gardener taking advantage of the free fertilizer? Cultivation requires patience and perseverance, both are ox traits.

Most Chinese astrology readings I’ve seen are NOT taking into account the spiral of millennial spiritual change that Humanity has embarked upon, or the ramped up cosmic forces juicing up this cycle of time. Most are focused on the short term material plane effects of the financial crisis, and this is blinding them to the bigger cycle of change taking place under their nose.

The single biggest mistake I hear from media pundits East and West is to think that after the Rat Year tore down the old financial structure, now the Ox Year will steadily fix it back up, and we’ll soon be merrily back on course to enjoying the “old” prosperity after an ordinary recession. Blind and wishful thinking!

Pundits are hoping an Ox Year means we will sober up and get back to business as usual, and fix what “went wrong” in 2008. But the past in this case is not “fixable” – it was a 60 year bubble of government-driven inflation that began after WWII in the last Earth Ox Year 1949. Most don’t know that the Marshall Plan to rebuild post-war Europe was funded by Treasury-authorized derivative trading. This inflation was a fine way in the beginning to stimulate growth. But it was soon further fed by various hot wars (Korea, Vietnam), the Cold War arms race and religious-imperialism wars (Iraq, Afghanistan) and over spending on social entitlement programs. The private sector – Wall Street – figured out how to get in on the game, and got deliriously drunk on derivatives in the last 30 years. But this 60 year cycle is now OVER. We’re being chased instead by a deflationary bear, a cousin to the deflationary bear Japan has been feeding for 15 years.

however, we’re still left with the inflation hangover, with a global headache and enough financial pain to drive reform. It will take time for this 12 year cycle to fully deflate that old reality in order to find solid footing for a new reality to emerge where “solid value” will replace “leveraged hope/greed”. We’ve still got two years of Metal and two years of Water in the yin phase of cleansing and re-birthing.

This takes us into 2013 just to get half way through this 12 year cycle, before we get into the truly expansive Wood and Fire phases. Of course there are mini-cycles of expansion within those years, but 2009 is Yin Earth, a phase to consolidate new infrastructure. (This is the five phase “creation cycle”, best understood by feeling it in your body. See Qigong Fundamentals 1&2 or Fusion of 5 Elements 1 on website.

Will the government bailout produce an economic recovery? Not in 2009. The Yin Earth is weighing heavily on the water element, drying it up. Water represents the flow of money. It takes a collective feeling of trust to restore that flow, and the Ox does support that feeling. But until the financial sector heals, the other sectors will find only sporadic growth. What about the trillions in bailout funds?  Won’t that kick start the money flow, or even cause runaway inflation? Again, not in 2009.

What is the safest investment? Ask yourself: what is “the Ox” in the global financial system? What does the entire system reply upon, so ubiquitous you hardly notice it is there, like water in the ocean? The Ox here is the U.S. Dollar itself, and its status as world reserve currency. In times of panic and depression, fear drives investors to the dollar, even if it appears that down the road it is being de-based as a currency and will eventually be devalued. Historically, in time of deflation, the dollar as done well.

In 2009 the safest bet is the US Dollar-Ox currency itself, which should APPRECIATE against all other paper currencies, despite the gloom and doom predictions of hyper-inflation. It will ultimately lose value against real things, like gold and commodities, but that is a longer term bet. So anything backed by the US government should do well, especially new bonds issued at higher interest rates or corporations benefiting from government guarantees as recovery begins.

In the last Earth Ox Year 1949 the British devalued the pound from $4.03 to $2.80, leading to many other currencies being devalued. Expect the pound and the Euro to both tumble against the dollar in 2009 as their structural weaknesses become more apparent. What about apparent inflation from the Fed’s printing presses? That money won’t find much velocity in the economy, although hyper-inflation may rear its head in a later part of this cycle of cleansing simultaneously with deflation. That may be needed as part of the shift to a new reality. The dollar itself will eventually be taken to the cleaners as the world re-organizes its currencies more equitably and dollar loses its “reserve” status.

Everyone will realize that US govt. printing of money is effectively a giant ponzi scheme in which the last investors into the “eternal inflation/debasement” dollar scam are our planet’s children. But our kids may look at the mountain of printed paper debt and say,”no way!”. It would be much kinder if the parents (“us”) would reinvent a new global financial system that is fair to other countries, and less prone to abuse by US politicians printing their way out of a pickle (aka “failed empire”) they helped create. But that won’t happen in 2009. The very stability of the “ox dollar” will perversely attract investment, even as it is debased monetarily.

Hundreds of debt-laden companies globally will declare bankruptcy in 2009 as the giant 60 year balloon deflates and the business model of “maximum leverage = maximum profit” is suddenly seen for the mirage it always was. The mirage was based on the illusion of human emotion and its hope for eternal expansion. This explains why the government can’t just “buy” its way back out of a depression. The investment advisor Jeremy Grantham summarizes it nicely:

“How could we kid ourselves that we were suddenly rich
and didn’t need to save for our pensions when we were
sitting in the very same buildings we bought in 1974?
With “wealth” built on such false premises, it is not
surprising that we come to grief from time to time.  But
the good news is that, as we move back down to earlier
prices, they are still the same houses.  We have not lost
wealth, but just the illusion of wealth.

Now the illusion of wealth has been lost, with formidably
negative effects on animal spirits.  My hero, Keynes,
emphasized the importance of shifts in animal spirits in
economics, and explained how shifts in such spirits could
ruin the most carefully calculated investment decisions.

It was often said that the Japanese should have bitten
the bullet as the U.S. did in its S&L crisis, taking a quick
hit rather than dragging out the pain.  How superficial
and self-congratulatory those comments seem now. Faced
with our own credit crisis, we discover there is no easy
cure – the bullet turns out to be a grenade, which doesn’t
fit as easily into the mouth.”

Obama’s economic advisors are all Keynesians. This “animal spirit” component of economic reality is exactly why Chinese astrology is every bit as scientific as modern economics. Astrology is based on 12 Earthly Animal “spirits”, which are reflections of 12 Celestial zodiacal (stellar) cycles regulating the cycles of natural change. Understand these cycles of animal spirits, and you can shape them. Ignore or resist them, and they will shape you.

Want to get in touch with the larger “animal spirits? You can start with my Five Animals qigong DVD to awaken your personal animals. My three favorite qigong forms to connect to the larger Heaven & Earth cycles are Primordial Qigong (see www.TaiChi-Enlightenment.com), Deep Healing Qigong,  and the Shamanic Big Dipper 7-Star Qigong ceremony, which is not yet on DVD. However, you can learn it on the May 2009 China Dream Trip  (www.healingdao.com/chinatrip2009.html). I feel all of these forms got me in touch with forces that guided me to make wise investments in 2008, and protected me from the worst carnage. See section on new technology nano motor below.

Grantham’s phrase,  “We have not lost wealth, but just the illusion of wealth”, summarizes exactly our current quandary. The stock certificates, houses, cars, piles of trinkets imported from China are all still here – we’ve just re-priced them 40% lower. Hooray! The good news is that Life will become affordable again. Good year for small businesses to hire talent more cheaply, rent space, get market share. Ox advice to work hard and trust in yourself and your business idea still applies.

But the bad news is that we’ve got another 15 Trillion USD in bad debt that still has to be “written down” or otherwise deflated, and that will take YEARS. That’s why the Fed pumping a couple trillion a year into the economy won’t inflate it immediately – the deflationary black hole swallows most of it.

The Not-so-bad News is that at its peak bubble Japan was leveraged three times as much as the US (as % of GDP), so it may only take us 5 years instead of Japan’s 15 years to mop it up……but the USA is the world’sbiggest debtor country., and has a small margin of error if its loses international trust. Meanwhile those wise asians have been saving and will spring back much quicker than the American consumer, who is flat on his back and down for the count.

So the situation is very complex and outcomes are totally unknown as we spiral into our new world paradigm. That makes investing very problematic as well. so the best Ox year financial advice is to INVEST In YOURSELF.  If you don’t own a business or are not self-employed, invest in your spiritual transformation. That is the only guaranteeed payback.

It’s important to know that the economy can be doing poorly even while the stock market rises. This is because the stock market reflects human optimism and is forward looking. Plus there is trillions of scared dollars sitting in cash right now. During blips of rising confidence the companies that will benefit most from a re-investment surge  will be the huge safe “ox” blue chip companies that are currently devalued. They may see big gains by the end of 2009 as we move into a yang Metal/Gold phase of the dynamic Tiger in 2010.

What about gold and precious metals? Earth element supports their growth, so its a safe investment for those with a long term horizon. But because of the global deflation and lack of monetary circulation, gold’s short term value may fall, even if it climbs back up slowly by the end of 2009 for a surge in the next Metal/Gold Tiger Year. But I expect a sharp downward drop in gold in mid-2009. I’ve sold my gold stocks and hope to buy them back later more cheaply.

But prudent to keep some gold coins and junk silver around for the Day of Reckoning for the US Dollar, which, like Death, will eventually come. I suggest Canadian Maple gold coins at www.firstfederalcoincorp.com. Or store pooled gold at www.Kitco.com in case you are worried about  government confiscation of gold….it has happened twice in the past. For a cynical and sharp eye cast on the financial world, consider Porter Stansberry’s free newslelter (DailyWealth.com)

First, a quick look back at the last Earth Ox year.

1949 was the first year in which no African-American was lynched in the USA. 60 years later, we get a black President.

1949 saw Truman offer the Fair Deal to underwrite housing and social welfare. Social conscience is one aspect of the Earth Ox Obama also displays.

In 1949 George Orwell’s  book 1984 was published. Ironically, the McCarthy witch hunts against communists in America began that blacklisted many famous actors and artists.. Even Helen Keller was accused. Maybe Obama will redirect that impulse into a financial witchhunt for Wall street gangsters?

Expect some conservative backlash in 2009. Homeland Security is building an office complex to house 25,000 workers….we’ll never get rid of them. Who is their real master?

When will the US Shadow Government – an elite military-industrial complex, be “outed” and made transparent? Where will the Dark Side have to hide when that happens, besides in our own hearts?

I Ching says this is a time to “return” to our origins.

What are America’s true origins? The preamble to the “second” Constitution (adopted in 1787 – 11 years after the American revolution) gives the nation’s six founding principles: society, justice, peace, security, commonwealth, and freedom. Neither individual nor corporate riches make the list. Riches are a by-product of American society, not its guiding purpose.

The first Articles of Confederation that guided the USA before the current Constitution were not ratified until 1781, a Metal Ox Year. They upheld two principles: a weak federal government and unfettered capitalism. But it was leading towards a crackup of the first US Confederation, as the central Federal government couldn’t raise any money to operate. Weak federal leadership and unfettered capitalism were replayed in economic policies of the past 30 years and contributed to the current economic disaster.

So we are now in a cycle of “returning” to core political and human values. No imposed system will work for long unless it supports individuals over corporations. Corporations were not protected under the Constitution – how did they get so many rights? (for simple tax law changes that could make this happen, read the essay that inspired the above paraphrase of his thoughts, by  David Johnston http://www.motherjones.com/toc/2009/01/index.html )

In this next cycle, we have a chance to end the socialism for the rich, the kind of corporate socialism that has marginalized the small entrepreneur that built America. The big bailouts could either be more of the same corporate socialism or they could result in an experimental mix of personal capitalism and federally owned enterprises similar to what Deng Xiao Peng introduced in China with great success. If you’re going to dump hundreds of billions into banks, why not own them outright for the benefit of the people? Outright socialism is more fair than corporate socialism….

In the last yin-earth-ox year (1949) the world settled into a new order. People’s Republic of China came into being, so did NATO. The Cold War began, with the USSR testing its first atomic bomb.  Stalin consolidated his control and began threatening Soviet Jews.

With old structures of an Imperial America and American consumerism dying as the driver behind the old economic model, what new structures will emerge in 2009? I have long maintained we are headed for a global leveling in which all countries become “2nd World” as the 1st World and 3rd World exchange wealth for labor/resources and the internet globalizes information. Where will all this lead? Let’s decide – this year!

Both the light and the dark sides are promoting globalization, world government, and universal currency. Dark side wants it for control, the Light side for unity.

They are each using each other to move their agenda forward. It couldn’t be any other way….meanwhile, this cycle of expanding human consciousness is unstoppable and inexorable, the human wild card factor in how all this plays out.
————–

I don’t have a TV in either Asheville, NC or my Caribbean winter hideout… I walked into a shanty town on my small island for groceries the day of Obama’s inauguration. Happened to pass a shop with Obama on a TV screen, and so I walked in. “That’s my new president”, I said to the black woman who ran the shop. She looked at me, and without hesitating, replied proudly, “He is my president, too”.  So we watched the ceremonies together, in a beautiful feeling of oneness.  She was amazed to discover that I, a white man, had voted for Obama over a white candidate.

These islanders are poor black ex-slaves, who were liberated because the island sugar plantations failed after all the trees were cut down and the island “dried out”. The trees were part of a delicate eco-system. So an ecological disaster led to their freedom; their British masters just upped and left.

Likewise, the planetary ecological disaster of global warming and ocean acidification from carbon dioxide and the financial disasters – will all be the ground for the liberation of the planet.

Year of the Ox is a time to CELEBRATE the hardships caused by the financial collapse, that the old field of reality has been cleared away, making it possible for the Ox to plough a totally new crop…..to consolidate the local and global community that this Yellow Empress Ox represents.

Natural Disasters in Year of Earth Ox.

We could see major disaster this year as the staid Earth Ox is subject to sudden bursts of temper. This is due to an uncontrolled fire element, which is normally controlled by water, but water is suppressed this Earth year.

In 1769 Earth Ox Year a famine in Bengal killed 10 million people, a third of the population, in the worst natural disaster in human history (in terms of lives lost).

In 1889 the Johnstown Flood killed more than 2,200 people when a dam broke. The same year a huge locust swarm crossed the Red Sea and destroyed crops in the Nile Valley.

My favorite story on the Ox temper in dishing out natural justice: in 1889 a German naval force shells a village in Samoa, causing minor damage to American property.. 3 American warships enter the Samoan harbor and prepare to fire on the 3 German warships. Before guns are fired, a hurricane blows in and sinks all the ships, American and German, and 200 sailors drown. A compulsory armistice is called because of the lack of warships.

Perhaps this is our best hope for the global arms race – that the earth changes in the current cycle compel us to divert all military spending to something more productive. Wars generate a feeling of hated, natural diasters inspire love and compassion. It seems humans need something dramatic in order to change their ways….

First, let’s note that Earth Ox years have been pivotal turning points in manifesting the technologies that drive global paradigm shifts.

particularly major advances in transport and to lesser extent in communication. Some Earth Ox history: the first documented hot-air balloon flight in Europe (1709). In 1769 James Watt demonstrated the first commercially viable steam engine, which fired up the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain and soon spread to the globe. It is probably the single biggest turning point in modern history, driving hundreds of millions to cities and driving oil and natural resource use to unprecedented heights of consumption.

This steam engine invention, harnessing fire and water to produce steam, was a direct download of an ancient spiritual technology still taught in Taoist internal alchemy as “Water & Fire” methods used to produce an inner steam of primordial chi…..(www.healingtaousa.com/isa.html).

The steam-wagon in 1769.

1829: Typewriter is invented.

1889: The Eiffel Tower is inaugurated as a marvel of the steel age. The first long distance electric power transmission line in the United States is completed, running 14 miles between Willamette Falls and  Portland, Oregon.

1949: the first commercial jet airline flight. First TV show is aired.

2009: Nano-orbital electric motor hits the market (first in Asia, shortly afterwards the globe). History will later mark this as the beginning of the post-industrial revolution….

This electric nano-motor is one amongst many neo-Atlantean technologies soon to surface. I invested in it during the Rat Year, on the day of a solar eclipse. I risked my life savings to become the first angel investor, based on a favorable I Ching reading and my “inside” esoteric information. I knew it was time for new technologies to be deployed, gifts from Heaven to allow Humanity to re-invent its destructive techno-culture in this new cycle.

The first electric motor was invented by Nikola Tesla, an old Atlantean soul. Westinghouse was founded on that motor, and it’s basically unchanged since then. Its popularity has had unfortunate polluting side effects.The inventor of this nano orbital motor never graduated from high school. His education? Studying religiously his “bible” –  a book with Tesla’s 3000 patents. To view a 10 minute video clip of an earlier prototype of this new technology put into a motor scooter, see: www.abetterworld.net/scooter I knew this was a great investment when an M.I.T. scientist declared the nano motor was impossible and the video a fraud.

Just as whale oil was replaced by petroleum, so new technologies will replace petroleum, and the whole planet and global economy will go through a paradigm shift. We are on the technological cusp of that shift in 2009. All the frenzy over “peak oil” and hysteria over falling into the dark ages will disappear in a puff. This nano-motor is only the first wave. We are investigating coupling this new nano motor with a battery that charges in 6 seconds and lasts a lifetime.

Over all nano orbital engine efficiency is a 100% increase over existing electric motors – no gears, few moving parts, little lost heat, perfect sync between torque at high frequencies and a digital motor controller – all at a manufacturing cost lower than combustion motors. Zero pollution and quiet. This is NOT experimental – it’s going on the market later this Ox year. Would you buy one at a price cheaper than a gas engine model? If every motor on the planet was replaced with a nano-motor, global oil consumption would fall 50%. To Exxon: no need to worry, it will take a while. And it will reduce your drilling costs.

So take hope, the Ox is slowly turning the wheels of change.

Side note: If you have $100K minimum and are interested in investing in the pre-financing of the Preferred B Shares at a handsome discount, contact me asap for the offering. There are few “green tech” opportunities like this one, and the window for early investors will soon close.

Sharing the Cosmic Yoke of my fellow Oxen,

Michael Winn

oxoxoxoxoxoxox (that is how an “ox” hugs and kisses….. 🙂

“Who takes Heaven as his ancestor, Virtue as his home,
the Tao as his door, and who becomes change — is a
Sage.”    — Chuang Tzu, Inner Chapters

“The Tao is very close, but everyone looks far away.
Life is very simple, but everyone seeks difficulty.”
               — Taoist Sage, 200 B.C