A dear friend of mine, Nick Borrell, says that when you ask the BIG questions, you open a window into the Universe. As he puts it, “It creates the opportunity for fresh air to flow in and for a fresh answer to emerge.” It invites the enormous energy of creativity to pour in, and you must be very careful to leave the window open long enough to get the answers you seek — you must be patient. Now, in the beginning of the New Year, is the time that we traditionally ask the big questions: what do we want in our lives? What do we want in our world?

If we take a focus of attention inward regularly, we can realize intuitively that our conscious awareness, rather than being separate from the world as it seems to be, exists as a field of consciousness everywhere in all space. We can discover that awareness doesn’t just exist inside our own head but also extends into the space inside and around all of us, as a field-self or non-local self that we all participate in. This spatial consciousness extends throughout the Universe and is aware everywhere within itself. Inside each one of us, it’s providing a conscious awareness which is experienced through the context of our human eyes, ears and touch.

“In the past two years I feel like I have truly taken a leap of faith. I graduated college as a dance major a year early, then packed up, and left my friends and family back in the Midwest, and moved out to New York City. In a city of millions, I knew next to no one, and was attempting to pursue a difficult career in dance, no less. Within the first year of being in NYC, my mother died unexpectedly of cancer, and the year following, my friend and aerialist partner, died in a tragic accident while performing.

On January 21st the entirety of the North and South American continents will get to experience a total lunar eclipse for the first time in 19 years. Lunar eclipses happen about once a year, but they usually appear partial to most viewers, so this is a rarity. The next time it happens is in 2058. What this means is that you don’t have to travel anywhere to see what will appear to be a huge, red moon. Just go out on the night of January 20th and look up.

While texting back and forth with one of my friends in Texas, we got on the discussion of sandwiches. I was lamenting that one of the only foods I genuinely miss is an Italian combo. Not that stuff you get out west where it’s a little ham and salami and some oil and vinegar (they put mayo on them out here!! MAYO!!) I mean a legit east coast, 10 types of meats with banana peppers and provolone, ITALIAN COMBO (which, if you ever find yourself in Hawthorne/Valhalla, NY, check out Pops Deli. Get menu option C4 – best Italian combo ever). So I was on a quest to get as close as I could to those flavors, and I feel that I’ve come pretty close….

Chronicle One begins… Being My Search for the Round Table These are strange, restless times when, in the words of the late Joseph Campbell: “We have no modern myths to sustain us.” Many of us live greedy, fragmented lives, devoid of any direct contact with nature, the numinous or the divine. We are often dissatisfied, or disaffected, forever in pursuit of elusive Eldorados. Why? Whatever made us this way? Sociologists and psychologists blame it all on the Industrial Revolution – the age of the machine. Certainly, science has been doing its best, since the Age of Reason, to make mythology irrelevant, and the Christian church, in turn, has made God appear to be against Nature. As a direct result anything natural or mythological has been viewed with the gravest suspicion and frequently derided in public, certainly during the course of the twentieth century.

Happy Holidays from Merlian News! We thank you for your support, and wish you and your loved ones a season of warmth, joy, and good tidings! This Month’s Recommended Merlian News Articles…

Is your pleasure more important than your morals? It’s an interesting question, and one that I’ve never been able to answer, or even fully articulate, till now. The 16-25 year old me says “absolutely.” I drank, did drugs, committed crimes. Hurt whoever, whenever, and treated people that loved me like crap. I did horrible things to people I should have cared about just so I could chase that NEW thing. Pleasure, not in a sexual sense, but the pleasure of just doing whatever the hell I wanted, whenever I wanted, was the GOAL. Now I thank the gods every day that I still have friends from back then that put up with me.