Staying Aligned through Difficult Times

All is well

Apr 13, 2025

Abraham is always saying “All is well.” Even when it looks like all is awful, all is well. It seems the only way to understand it when things seem anything but well, is to step back a little and examine the bigger picture.

“The Arc of the Moral Universe is Long, But it Bends Toward Justice.”
-Martin Luther King

The above quote is true. It’s true because we are creating our future and we are evolving at the same time, and as we evolve into more, the future we create becomes better. This is the path we’ve been on for as long as we have existed. Certainly from as far back as we are able to see.

And it’s all a cycle. We make a circle, and then we make a slightly bigger circle around the outside of it, and then we make another bigger one around the outside of that. We’re making the same circle over and over, but each time with more information, more experience, more ingredients. So each new circle is a repeat of the old one, yes, but it’s also a new and improved version that incorporates what we learned from previous circles.

Why, then, does it feel like we’re going backwards?

You know when astrology types say a planet is “retrograde?” What that means is that its motion, from the viewpoint of a human on earth with a big telescope, appears to be moving in reverse even though it’s physically impossible for it to be. It’s an optical illusion. It has to do with the angles or something. It only looks like it’s moving backwards, when in fact, it is still moving forward. We know this, because when the angle shifts the planet has progressed exactly as it should. There’s been no backtracking.

Despite appearances, all is well.

All is well, despite how things look.

The USA is in Retrograde

It appears to everyone on planet earth as if we are moving backwards. But this is an illusion. In reality we are still moving forward, it’s just happening out of sight, hidden by the angles. And by necessity.

When the angles correct, the US will emerge having evolved to the next level yet again. We will find that we are further ahead than we were before the retrograde, which can only mean that we really were moving forward the whole time. There was no backward motion, only the appearance of it.

We will have moved from a nation where our freedoms were very quietly eroding, to a nation where they are in fuller force than ever before, and this time they will cover everyone.

We will have moved from a nation where fear of anyone different from ourselves, into a people who recognize that they themselves are the ones who are different—unique, as they are meant to be. As each of us are. We’ll have found the beauty of that wonderful fact that’s kind of the whole point of our existence—the differences. The crazy-quilt of life on earth is what makes it the miracle it is.

Living in the Retrograde: For Ourselves

That might be comforting to think about for later. But in the meantime, we have to live in the now, and to do that we must help each other in every way we can. And like in an airplane emergency, you must put your own mask on first, or you’ll pass out while trying to help your seat mate and both of you will perish. Mask yourself, then stay conscious long enough to help your neighbor, and you both survive.

The things we must do for ourselves to get through this time cover three main areas of living. Body, mind, and spirit.

The Body: This is a time for us to adjust our lifestyle and habits for peak health. The less we rely on prescription medications (to a sane degree—we must have vaccines and we still need antibiotics) to keep us alive, the better. And we can deal with most chronic conditions without medication, and that’s the truth. Exercise and diet can reduce or even eliminate the need for blood pressure meds, heart rate stabilizers, erectile dysfunction meds, type 2 diabetes meds including insulin. However, NO REDUCTION IN PRESCRIPTIONS MUST BE UNDERTAKEN WITHOUT MEDICAL SUPERVISION. Never stop taking a med without medical monitoring. It can kill you, and lifestyle can’t fix everything. But it can improve most things and can eliminate some things altogether.

This is the stuff I cover on Eat Like You Give a Shit, my food blog.

Make your better choices, that's all. Let the new habits create themselves as you put more thought into every single choice you make about food and movement throughout each day—choices like parking further from the entrance rather than closer, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, ordering the brown rice or whole grain bread instead of white rice and bread, and water instead of soda. You will slide easily into a healthier lifestyle.

When facing the greatest challenges of our lives (especially if that challenge is aging) we need to put our bodies into their best, most resilient, strongest condition. Think of us before crisis, and during crisis, as the difference between Linda Hamilton in Terminator and Linda Hamilton in T2.

To make ourselves even more self-sufficient we are increasing the amount of food we grow at home, an ongoing project also being discussed over on the foodie blog.

For the mind

Daily meditation and a full night’s sleep each night, exercise each day and a whole food plant based diet can improve mental health as well. It’s been shown to reduce risk of alzeheimer’s and also reduces anxiety and depression to a great degree.

And we need two main things for our mental health, an outlet for frustration that is productive rather than destructive, and a break from whatever is given us said frustration.

So for me, these days, the frustration outlets include getting involved with local groups, protesting on weekends, and writing my political blog, Shayne on US

Breaks from the thing causing the frustration seems the opposite of the above outlets and requires outlets of its own. In my case it means, turn off the news, unplug the internet, and undertake projects that have nothing to do with the object of my particular frustration.

Spring is springing so I’m all about planting seeds and early spring gardening. Another thing I’m writing about over on the foodie blog.

For the Spirit

I just feel it’s crucial to nurture what we do want harder than we push against what we don’t want. There’s a balance here, and the weights that tip it one way or the other are made of our attention. So attention to what’s good will bring more of what’s good, and attention to what’s bad will bring more of that.

I’ve made peace with attention to the bad causing it to grow faster, which will lead to it bursting faster, which will lead to its ending faster. Nationwide, that’s the goal.

But for each of us individually, it’s VITAL that we pay more attention in our everyday lives, to what’s going right.

So much is still going right. The birds outside are singing, the sun is shining, spring is springing, our air quality here is still good, the flowers outside are peeking out of the ground and the fish will soon awaken from their torpor. Everyone’s healthy, for right now, in this red-hot moment, everything around me is good. This is presence—being focused in your moment for most moment of your day.

All is well there.

What we must do for each other

Feed and home each other. While we are steadily making ourselves healthier, stronger, and more resilient, we must also be nurturing and expanding our habits of caring for each other and reciprocity. Look, folks, humans existed for millennia without governments. We can make it, even if ours collapses, so long as we take care of each other.

Note that I said to help while we are improving our own well-being, not after. First because there is no after, a healthy lifestyle is a process of evolution that will be with you for the rest of your life once you adopt it. And second, because our fellow humans need the help now, not later.

So I suggest looking up all the food pantries and halfway houses and homeless shelters and other groups that offer care and help to local people in need, and offer care and help to those that you feel compelled to. Donate. Volunteer. Spread their message. And by all means include in this group no-kill animal shelters, and libraries!

The local agencies are the ones who will feel the pinch fastest and most, so help locally as much as you possibly can.

Understand that you can’t help them all, unless you have billions to spread around, in which case, please do. For the rest of us, choose one or two and do what you can. If we all did that, our local charities would be turning away volunteers for lack of things to be done. Why isn’t it like that?

Be a voice for each other. While we still have a government in place, those who are privileged (white, or wealthy, or both) need to speak loudly and frequently for the rights and freedoms of us all, because those who are not privileged are risking a great deal more by speaking out.

So we white ladies need to be so loud and so active that our sisters with different melanin levels don’t have to. It’s not mouthy white women being shipped off to slave labor camps. YET. We still have some level of protection from the powers that be, and so to my mind, we are obligated to use it.

Using privilege for good. What a concept.

We whose rights are still in place must speak out for those whose rights are being trampled. This is simply part of caring for our family—because we are all family.

The same Consciouness is the source of every “individual” mind on this planet. They’re all livestreams from the same network. Just different shows.

Disengaging is not possible

We are living in this reality, so we can’t disengage from it. Ignore it and it will go away is a misinterpretation of the way the Law of Attraction works. Things never get deleted, then can only be overwritten with better things. And so we can’t DISengage with the reality we have created. We can only ENGAGE with the reality that will replace it.

So engage. SUPER-engage in envisioning and talking about and building a better way forward. The side effect of this will be the overwriting the current version, and pushing it into the deep grave of history.