This is the message from the Christmas card we sent out this year. There is a depiction of the earth on the cover.

 This blue-green orb spirals through the blackness of space.
Illuminated by the sun she follows on her cosmic journey,
accompanied by the softly glowing moon.

Our urgent hearts lead her on the way.
Eager for fresh horizons among the stars,
we forsake the old ways born of human forgetting,
to embrace the destiny shown by the One who came
on that first Christmas so long ago,
and to live consciously
in the fields of grace of which he spoke
as awakened souls on this new day of Creation.

Love and Light to You,
Emissaries of Divine Light

 We sometimes think about Planet Earth revolving around the sun, as if it’s solely a circular affair, as if the sun itself was stationary and we are just going continually around it in the same orbit every year. Factually speaking, that’s not true. Of course there are all the other planets that are themselves orbiting around the sun, and so our relationship to them is changing year by year. There is a different configuration of planets all the time. But beyond that, the sun itself is on a journey through the cosmos. It’s a traveler through space. We on Planet Earth are moving about that sun, but because the sun itself is moving, our movement through the universe follows the sun’s, and our orbit is much more like a spiral than a circle. Because of that, we are always moving into fresh horizons.

I’m a latecomer to astrology. I was a nonbeliever up until a certain point—I thought it was people taking advantage of other people with something that didn’t go much past a fortune cookie. Until one day I went to a bookstore and on the shelf next to a window they had lined up books for each of the horoscope signs in piles, according to the sign. I went to mine, which is Aquarius. I later found out that not only is my sun sign Aquarius but I also have Aquarius rising. That means I’m Aquarian on the inside and on the outside.

I looked at this stack of books and picked up the one on Aquarius, and I began to read it and thought, “Wow, that sounds a lot like me!” It was saying rather flattering things about the sign, and so I was enjoying reading what was in the book. I thought to myself that there’s probably a way to write such things so that every one of these books would sound familiar to the reader, and every one of these books would sound flattering, so the person who wrote them would sell many books. I’m a skeptical person. So I moved over to the next book on the next sign, I opened it up, and No, that doesn’t really sound like me. I put it down and I moved on to the next one, and no, that really didn’t sound like me. And so it went. And so I became a believer.

What I know from my own experience and from deep in my own soul is that we are on a journey. Today isn’t like yesterday; circumstances change. I move or visit different places, the configuration of people around me changes—people come, people go. Babies are born and people I know pass away. So all of that changes.

But even those things can’t explain the deep changes I feel in my heart and soul as time moves on. In this day, I wake up with this sense that something is profoundly changed, something is different. I sense it relates to the celestial context in which we live, though I don’t reduce it to an astrology reading.

We can attribute what’s changing to all kinds of things: our own process of growth and development, and then our aging. Yes, all that’s in the picture; all that’s changing in our life. All of that is not so much determined by the stars or determined by our movement through the cosmos, but it is all moving in harmony with that larger reality. There are essential factors of Creation that are changing. Our circumstances are changing, but not only the familiar outer circumstances. The essential creative factors in our life are changing. They are not as they were. When we reach for what was—that had so much energy and meaning in our life at one point—and find it’s no longer there, it’s a good time to wake up to what is there.

I shared on my blog on DavidKarchere.com an article entitled Sound Healing: Ancient Roots, New Awakening. I speak of how the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, known for his theorem on triangles, studied vibration and the relationship that sound has to the substance that’s vibrating. He also theorized that the frequencies that we know in music and that we know in our life relate to the frequencies of the planets, and that the planets themselves are vibrating musically.

I raise it here, not to go into a dissertation on which planet is middle C, but because I believe it is important for us to attune to what is really happening in Creation. What I am proposing is that we each have the mechanisms in consciousness through which we can tune in to what’s really happening, to what the real creative factors are in our life.

I find that happening for myself as we pass through the solstice. I find a deep tuning going on. It appears as a deep craving and longing to come home and to know the larger context in which I live. That craving can feel like loneliness, maybe even desolation, sadness, loss and grief. All those feelings can relate to what has been—maybe a loved one who has passed on, maybe a family that has changed. Sometimes these feelings of loneliness can lead to depression for people at this time of year.

What a person may not realize is that the vibrational factors in their life have changed. The very energies that used to be in their life the way they were have changed. In fact, they are constantly changing. We, as human beings, have to find a way to get a cosmic download of the new program, the new energy. That’s what the solstice is really about.

If Christmas has a meaning, is it not that? Isn’t that what we’re celebrating in Jesus’ birth? He came to bring a big cosmic download. In his life he said, “It has been written…” That’s the old program. The old program is fine. “But I say unto you…” Here’s the new program. It becomes our job to get with the program; to attune to the new vibrational factors.

For many years, at Sunrise Ranch, we have spoken about the significance of the Word. That significance is celebrated every Sunday morning in the Dome at Sunrise Ranch, and it is celebrated in words, but not just words. It’s celebrated in all kinds of expression, including music. If music has meaning and significance in our life, it is because it’s part of a download from the cosmos. Through listening to music that is meaningful to you, you are orienting to a new configuration of vibrational factors in your life. That music is the Word, if we use the word Word to mean not just words, as we usually think of them, but the magic of Creation. As was said, “In the beginning was the Word”—the seed of life that could find expression and then, in finding expression, bring Creation.

You and I, as human beings, are meant to be the living Word in expression—to receive the Word from deep within us and then to let it express through us, through our mouth, through our instruments, through our mind and through our heart. In receiving the Word and giving it creative expression, we are attuning to the vibrational factors that are current now.

At this time of year, I get an uncontrollable urge to write music. I want to shut myself in my little studio and compose for days on end. What is that urge? I want the download. I want to get it, and I want to get it all—not just the beginning of it, not just little bits and pieces. I want to get the download; I want to get the symphony of Creation now, every last note of it. I want to know it deep in my heart and my soul. I want to attune to it. I want to let go of all the old music.

I like some of my old songs okay, and I like other people’s songs. But the way I think of it is this: the songs I’ve already written, some of them years and decades ago, are mostly for other people now. If they help somebody else to receive a download, wonderful. But the download I get is my own opening to what it is that’s looking to come through me.

So I ask, what is your symphony? What is looking to come from deep within you—that new pattern, that new creation, that new reality? And how are you going to let it through? For me, one of the painful things about this time of year is being torn between all the things that are happening around me for which I have responsibility, and my desire to shut myself in my studio. It would take about a month of being locked away in there, and I’d be good. I don’t think that’s happening.

How long would it take for you to write your symphony—to let what’s within you come all the way through and for you to really get your download, to really tune in to the cosmic factors?

Those fields of grace spoken of in the card are those cosmic factors into which we are moving now. That is the context in which we’re living out our lives. It doesn’t seem so always. We are, so often, huddled in our buildings at this time of year, staying warm. But, particularly here in Colorado, on a clear night it’s so easy to look up and realize that we are living our lives on a cosmic stage and that we are explorers in that reality. We’re not staying still. We’re moving through space. And all of space itself, all of the stars, all of the heavenly bodies are themselves moving. Things are changing. And if we never open ourselves to take a fresh breath, deeply, we’ll never really tune in to what the creative factors are now. We’ll never sing our opus, write our symphony, or create our masterpiece, whatever that might be. It could be a cake, a painting or a deep conversation with a friend. Ultimately, it is our life.

That masterpiece is first of all for you. You can share it with other people when you create your masterpiece. But first of all, you get to know it coming through yourself. That masterpiece is your Word, your truth, but you have to find your month in your own sacred space, whatever it is for you, to allow that truth to come through. It doesn’t really have to be a month, but it does require committed time and attention to receive the download. Once you receive and express it, the fields of grace are not just out there in space; because if you’ve allowed those fields of grace to pour out through you, those fields of grace create a world. That world is on the inside for all of us. Our job is to let it out so it is not only on the inside. It is re-created on the outside.