The Mad Tea Party, oil on canvas, 48"x 84", 2005 - Mark Bryan
Copyright © Mark Bryan


Last year I wrote to William Safire of the NY Times Magazine's On Language column. I asked him to look at the etymology of death/debt/doubt. I see them being highly connected and highly inflamed at the moment. He sent back a canned letter of thanks and didn't look at it, because I imagine, they are not linked etymologically. English is a wonderful amalgam of Celt, Viking, French plus all the Anglo/Saxon mash. The 3Ds are two French and one Old English, so they don't root together in origin. In the psyche and in the archetypes, welllllll...... I think these three are kissing cousins and in fact, they're enjoying quite an orgy these days.

Death, well you can feel it. It's at the bottom of the bucket. Death and loneliness runs the Game. That's why the ever popular eternal life and connection deal sells so well. It would've worked by now if it worked. It just works you and works you and works you, especially now. Connection is projection. You are never really connected to anyone or anything. Clear out those files or they will be singed and twanged ad nauseaum in the years ahead. More drama is built around ths stuff than anything else.

Debt is the way of the world. The creditors own the whole world and perhaps you or significant chunks of your life. Three quarters of all the mortgages in the central valley of California are upside down right now; they owe more than the house is worth. That's a big tip on a huge iceberg! That's not just sub-prime loans. It's all rotten to the bone, which is why they keep propping it up. There's tooooo much paper money and it's all at the top. The rest of us suffer rather helplessly at the bottom, no matter where you slice it. Undebt. Don't play their game. They live on and for the money. Starve the mother rapers. Get the Man off your back. The fascist manipulation will be around ownership and how they can tweak you. Don't let them own you. Be small and free if you have to. Big and trapped will not feel well in the years ahead. Even if you have to go small to be free, no worries. You can grow your wealth while free. We'll all be sharing much more. If we don't, the planet will collapse and we'll have to buddy up. I say buddy up ahead of time and laugh all the way to wherever you are going, while enjoying a cushion in the bank. Don't bank on the banks. Bank on yourself and your circle of friends and be clear and conscious throughout.

Doubt is the very condition and conditioning of the mind. It's screaming in every one's ear all the time now. The mind, as it has been, has been upleveled recently, so that the lower mind is at war in its own system with the higher mind. That's unusual and makes lots of noise. Meanwhile, as everything changes rapidly as we circle the drain endtimesedly, the surface area of the mind has expanded, because all aspects of life are in flux; it pulls the attention. You can't rest. This is of course part of the epidemic of tiredness that you see in most everyone. The 3D's intertwine so effectively by triggering each other's schtick. No wonder suicide is popular. The boring constrictor of the software squeezes 'til ya can't breathe, or so it'll have you believe.

Breathe. You are fine. Life is a wild ride beyond anything we've ever seen. Time marches on...... and so.........

Welcome to leap month! We are going from Pig to Rat in the Chinese Calendar on 2/7/08. That seems appropriate. I reckon we'll see the rats who've been hogging it all. Meanwhile, I suspect that you are feeling grouchy, tired, hidden and draggin'. Pursuing the Green Destiny seems more daunting than perhaps it is worth. Most importantly you can realize the double edginess of this sword that requires major swallowing. The Dream is forked. Trying to make it all one only obscures the obvious. Unfork yourself by realizing your own consciousness and clear your identification in Creation. Your jaded foxiness will melt as well.

I saw the international opening of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2000. At the time, I wept at the end of the film when the lead female makes the leap, the leap into her own being. I encourage you likewise this year. Leap. Don't look first. You've been looking forever. Looking has the blind spots of its own projections. Be. Be conscious. But don't look. Looking has prevented your leaping into your own being. Looking has set up mirage. Leaping won't save you. It won't escape you or transcend you. Leaping is choosing to be you. Leap, I say, leap.

We've got Mardi Gras on Super Tuesday Primary Election day 2/5. Lent follows immediately after. It'd be nice if we could give up politics, but the parade rolls on: mal temps roulez. I don't see where it matters this year. This is such a rigged deal. The election in November and its outcome will be a real mess to match the mess of the world in our messianic times. Many surprising turns are yet to come, even after the convention, even after the election. The manipulations will be more evident than ever before. The sheep will follow. The fringes will get wild and violent and crushed and onwards. Many lines are being drawn in the shifting sands. This is still a fence sitter election, what with Pluto still being in the old Sagittarius, not the new Capricorn, on 11/4/08. The next one in 2012, that one will count; some real effective change can come of it. This year, we erect another cog sucker in the machine.

These are very heavy/heaving days. Keep on keepin' on despite the feet of clay. We are adjusting to a much thicker regime of background pattern. It gives traction. You can have manifest more of what you want and it will show up. What you don't want is showing up manifestly too, but notice that it is crap that finally has the traction to shift and move on. You'll like it after it has moved on.

New Moon Solar Eclipse in Aquarius on Ash Wednesday 2/6 at 7:44 pm PST all conjunct Mercury retrograde. This bodes grimly. The vanity insanity of human technowhizzing and angelic, off planet tinkering supreme will be revealed. Last year was the safest commercial aviation year on record. That's likely to reverse to catch up with the average. Shock is the disorder of the day. Many, many shocking things to come, shock which will be very difficult for people to keep up with in the days and daze ahead. Quakes start to pop like mad all over. Not the end of the world CA falls into the ocean thing?? just more unconscious, buried material that pops out of the human psyche via the agency of the planet. Likewise, if folks haven't faced their emotional goop, it gets pressed down, impacted into the body and eventually comes out as physical symptoms of all sorts including accidents.

The WGA writers strike will unwind. It's been important just to have a union/workers' stand for a change loudly in the media. Power to the people write on! I encourage everyone to re-value your lives, including economically. Society is getting reshuffled in a primal way. If you don't express what you want and don't want, it'll pass you by. Stand and express! Then let go of control.

Control does not work from here on out. Please re-read. This is essential for the next sixteen years while Pluto is in Capricorn. Realize the sovereignty of your own being. Be a chooser rather than beggared.

Heaviness will preponderate. Pluto in Sagittarius maintained a steady burn karmically. That is no longer available to people. If they aren't directly intending to burn their karma, the stuff is going to back up on them oh so fast and oh so fragrant. Capricorn is heavy, plutonium heavy. We already see celeb suicide in slow, fast and semi-intentional ways. It of course is happening everywhere and will ramp up to epidemic levels. Already last year the military had double the suicides and the Golden Gate Bridge was almost double their average number of jumpers. You will know people who commit suicide; it's that rampant.

The loneliness for the next sixteen years will be unbearable for many. All that you are ever lonely for is your own being. God and love and kitties and all never end the loneliness and longing. Claim your own being directly or suffer in the deepest to the bone suffering that any of us ever experience in the Dream. I'm not trying to scare you into shit. It's always there. All ways. All the usual and unusual remedies would've cured it by now. The loneliness is existential, systemic in the Dream. Turn off the Dream for you. I can remember that to you in a karma clearing session if it ever interests you.

Mercury goes direct 2/18 at 6:57 pm PST and hours later at 10:50 pm PST the Sun enters Pisces. Two days later, 2/20 at 7:30 pm, is Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Virgo/Pisces, which is off from the Moon's nodes which are now in Aquarius/Leo. Things just feel real weird now. This will deepen. Oy! We're just getting rolling on the surreality programming in a matrix near you. Drama of the most utter victim/tyrant, and its close cousin victim/savior, will be hemorrhaging micro and macro. We'll start to go into blur, wherein ya can't keep up with it. Too much, better known as overwhelm. For the rest of this decade and beyond, these annual transits of Sun and near planets through Pisces will be grindingly depressing for people's psyches. Implosion and explosion march on. Mars in Gemini and Saturn in Virgo sit off to the side of the Zodiac roughly opposed to the rest of the Planets in the cosmic/societal Signs of the end of the Zodiac. It offers perspective to see the Game. For most everyone, it represents the looping pattern of trying to figure out what to do, figure out what to do, figure out what to do??. You know what I'm talking about.

You will not be able to figure out what to do from here on out. It just won't work. It'll blow back on you with second thoughts, doubt, guilt, resentment, etc., etc. Be and choose. Remember, it's natural. You've been obscured by the mind, by the layers of karmic redundancy karma of the old kind better known as your stuff. You have to claim your own being to be a chooser and have a choice life. This era will make that abundantly clear.

The shift has hit the fanatical. The ignorance has come home to roost. The dull thud of power and control will now whine and whimper. Unmoored, unless you be. No anchoring. No orienting. No way home. You are the home you've been looking for, before the light and the tunnel. The 3D's of death/debt/doubt will try to tell you otherwise.

Claim your own consciousness and clear your identification in the Dream, the mind and suffering.

Onwards,
Mark