A Fistful of Fiery Stardust

A Fistful of Fiery Stardust

by Catherine Viel

Posted on May 31, 2025

May 30, 2025

Many are exhausted, short-fused, and sitting in a kind of pressure cooker that often makes no rational sense. There’s grief, irritation, and even a deep burning rage…the energy to me feels like a dragon’s fire. It is erupting through me…It’s amazing, exhausting, and sometimes scary…The challenge now is to feel it all, even the rage, and set ourselves free without burning down what we need and want to remain. ~ Jenny Schiltz

I’ve noticed how some of us pay cursory attention to nature, while others experience a deep awareness of and connection with the natural world. I gravitate toward the latter more and more as time goes by.

When I entered Stow Grove Park the other day, a squirrel was chattering madly high up in one of the redwoods. It ceased while I walked the path through the peaceful redwood grove, and when I left the park, I heard the chorus of squirrel barks recommence. 

Being attuned to signs of Spirit delivered through everyday nature encounters, I wondered if that scolding squirrel was a message for me. 

*****

Since there are anger-management courses aplenty, frequently mandated for certain offenders post-trial, it seems obvious that anger is an issue for many humans. 

We have limited choices when dealing with emotions we perceive as negative (or in spiritual correct-speak, “not preferred”). If something causes our temper to flare, we might tell ourselves to hold steady: wait until we can assess, and respond rather than react. After all, reacting is probably how people end up in those anger-management courses. 

For many people, a few deep breaths and reasoned self-talk probably work well. For others, the reaction is like a force of nature erupting from our body-mind-emotion amalgam. Trying to put the brakes on the response is no more use than reeling in a comet by its tail. The comet hurtles onward and we’re left holding a handful of fiery stardust. 

It’s no wonder the comet escapes my grasp. If Ayurvedic and homeopathic type assessments are valid, I’m apparently programmed to be the human version of that angry squirrel: defending my territory, scolding trespassers, and erecting barriers against invasion. 

Those aren’t behaviors I embrace or consciously choose. Perhaps if I’m noticing and feeling this so intensely right now, it’s not just me, but a collective experience as Jenny Schiltz describes in a recent newsletter.

*****

I do think there’s validity in holistic assessment tools as well as mainstream personality type assessments. I took the Myers-Briggs test decades ago, and it landed so accurately it was uncanny, bordering on witchcraft.

If I’m prone to prickliness, defending my territory, or other bad-tempered reactions, does it follow that I “chose” this body and mental-emotional construct? Were they essential ingredients in the recipe that created me?

Hmmm… what if I’m done with having those experiences, but am trapped in a lifelong homeopathic constitution and Ayurvedic type that continue promulgating a fiery, easily triggered temper?

What is the recourse for breaking free from this personal-matrix nightmare?

*****

I’m not sure that animals really get “angry.” I have a feeling that what we perceive as anger in animals is the behavior they manifest when they are threatened. When they are fearful. When their lives, or the lives of their young, or their territory, are under perceived attack.

Are we really that different? Is human anger an elevated response, lifted up above such base concerns as territorialism and self-protection?

I suspect not. No matter how we might justify our negative emotions and the “bad” behavior stemming from them, I think it’s likely that we’re just prettying up an evolutionary and biological response to threat.

*****

Homeopathic constitutions can be modified, the troublesome aspects toned down via dietary adjustments, homeopathic remedies, and holistic therapies. But the undesirable aspects of a homeopathic type won’t simply go away, especially if they are a lifelong imprint.

I ponder the seemingly carefree life of that chattering squirrel in the park. Do the other animals say, “Tone it down, will ya? Nobody’s threatening you.” There are no anger management courses in nature. 

One of Dr. Peebles’s suggestions is to ask ourselves: “I wonder what my soul is mastering?” A slightly more loosey-goosey approach than the dreary “What lesson am I supposed to be learning?” 

Who doesn’t want to be a master at something? It strikes me as peculiar that an immortal and limitless soul would need to master anything, but what do I know? I’m just the vehicle toting this particular God-fragment around on Planet Earth.

*****

The next time I go to the park and hear a squirrel chattering, I will slow down and really listen. I will spot it running across a branch high up in a magnificent redwood, hopping fearlessly from branch to branch and tree to tree. I will ask my soul: do you really want to keep emulating that perpetually antagonized squirrel? How about if we move on from this part of the program?

It’s not a solemn ritual or a fancy, multistep spiritual plan. Just a couple of questions, self to soul. God willing, the dialogue will go both ways, and the human me will be able to hear what the soul is speaking. 

Catherine Viel

• https://goldenageofgaia.com/author/catherine/

Of Spanners and Works

Of Spanners and Works

by Catherine Viel

Posted on January 24, 2025

January 23, 2025

The British phrase to throw a spanner in(to) the works means to cause disruption, to interfere with the smooth running of something. ~ Wordhistories.net

Just when I was taking a cautious breath of relief that LA area fires were not heading north toward Santa Barbara, that fond belief is crushed. Ventura is just one county south and far too close for comfort.

I suppose it’s credulous to imagine that the new administration could deter the Santa Ana winds (which seem a tiny bit manufactured, going on for such length and in such strength) when just on the third day of President Trump’s new term, he’s being thwarted by his opponents gaily defying supposedly sacrosanct executive orders left and right.

When I think of the Q storm being upon us, I never imagined it might be a fire storm, or so uncomfortably close to home. Interesting that the upsurge in the ravenous “wildfires” occurs on the eve of President Trump’s recently announced visit to LA.

*****

Having our plans derailed is nothing new to humans. I’m nonetheless experiencing moments of slack-jawed bafflement at the lengths to which the Deep State continues to cling by its ragged fingernails to its perceived powerbase.

I don’t know if turning up the torch on Southern California is a Deep State action. Nowadays I find it nearly impossible to discern what is the natural order of earth weather or geological activity, and what is manipulation.

And if the LA fires have been caused or made worse by weather weaponization, similar to what occurred in the previous “weather disasters” of Hurricanes Helene and Milton and bizarrely behaving “wildfires” in Lahaina, Hawaii, and Paradise, California, it hasn’t been reported as such by mainstream news or acknowledged by mainstream scientists.

I wonder if the magnitude of the not-yet-over LA fire disaster will accomplish what the mysterious fire and hurricane disasters in far-less-populous areas did not? I wonder if a relentless spotlight on an unfolding story will shine so brightly that machinations and criminal activity are undeniably exposed, even in the mainstream?

*****

It feels almost surreal to go about my day in the usual way, fixing meals, tending to the cats, relaxing with a book. Surreal, but not pointless. I think any of us who can manage to keep a largely normal routine are providing service not just to ourselves and our families, but to the larger world and the human collective. Calmness and normality are as precious as peace, and surely contribute greatly to that divine state.

Peace is always my goal and my objective. I allow my gaze to light briefly upon news headlines and video clips. A small corner of awareness stays alert to immediate surroundings. I can remain lightly vigilant, with a toe dipped into the pool of world news, and continue what feels like my real work of resting in groundedness and normality, when and how and where I can.

Catherine Viel

• https://goldenageofgaia.com/author/catherine/

Consistently Inconsistent

Consistently Inconsistent

by Catherine Viel

Posted on September 15, 2023

The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself…that’s where it’s at. ~ Jesse Owen

Not to be inconsistent, but I’m really not over my angst about people wearing masks. A mental exclamation point and eye roll were my reactions yesterday when I was in a parking lot and saw a woman wearing TWO tightly fitted N95 masks, elastics crisscrossing the back of her head.

I find myself increasingly longing for consistency. Not so much in the world, that’s fruitless. But in my self, in my moods, in my dealings with life. After an emotional roller coaster day yesterday, today I’m thinking: I realize humans are emotional beings, and we, as souls, supposedly chose to incarnate as these volatile creatures in part to experience all those emotions. 

But isn’t enough, enough? I’m not sure there’s an opt-out option, other than the obvious ones of death or insanity. Neither of those is appealing at the moment. 

*****

Yesterday demonstrated how inconsistent I am. Within a two-hour period I went from exasperated and flustered, to genuinely enjoying myself, to exasperation and worry. 

In retrospect, the enjoying-myself part of the program was all self-motivated and self-propelled. I went to Starbucks to cash in a gift card on a pumpkin spice latte and pumpkin cream cheese muffin, followed by a happy search for Fall-colored clothing.

I used to regularly partake of such mundane pleasures, but over the last several years, because of family obligations, going out and having a little fun has become so logistically complex it’s too much trouble to make the effort. 

The parts of the morning that were unpleasant happened because of other people’s behavior. My reaction to the unpleasantness sent my emotional elevator plummeting from the penthouse of enjoyment to the basement of resentment.

Oh, no, not this floor again.

*****

Other than praying mightily to become as serene as a Madonna with not a worry in the world, I haven’t come up with a workable approach. Everyone has responsibilities. Maybe our only control is in how we react to them, particularly if we feel that we did not ask for that “job” (even on a karmic level). 

From a slightly different perspective, perhaps I did agree to a particular responsibility. But did I really request that it go on quite this long, and in quite this fashion? It’s said that the devil is in the details, and apparently I didn’t look into the details when reviewing this part of my soul contract.

Before I embark on the HMS Poor Poor Pitiful Me, time to get quiet for a moment and check in with my dear heart. Or check in with my dear tarot cards. Seventy-eight cards, each with a unique voice and a unique tale to tell. It might be an interesting experiment to check in first with my dear heart, and then see what the Universe’s heart-voice wishes to whisper through the sacred tool of tarot.

I stroll to the inlaid cedar box where the colorful, chatty cards nestle, shuffle them thoughtfully, and center my attention on my queries.

Catherine Viel

https://goldenageofgaia.com/author/catherine/