Cempaka Culture and Tourism: Cuba prepares for Christmas with early gift from Obama

"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it), Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse), Illuminati (Started in Greece, with Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to build Africa, to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - (Text version)

“… The Shift in Human Nature

You're starting to see integrity change. Awareness recalibrates integrity, and the Human Being who would sit there and take advantage of another Human Being in an old energy would never do it in a new energy. The reason? It will become intuitive, so this is a shift in Human Nature as well, for in the past you have assumed that people take advantage of people first and integrity comes later. That's just ordinary Human nature.

In the past, Human nature expressed within governments worked like this: If you were stronger than the other one, you simply conquered them. If you were strong, it was an invitation to conquer. If you were weak, it was an invitation to be conquered. No one even thought about it. It was the way of things. The bigger you could have your armies, the better they would do when you sent them out to conquer. That's not how you think today. Did you notice?

Any country that thinks this way today will not survive, for humanity has discovered that the world goes far better by putting things together instead of tearing them apart. The new energy puts the weak and strong together in ways that make sense and that have integrity. Take a look at what happened to some of the businesses in this great land (USA). Up to 30 years ago, when you started realizing some of them didn't have integrity, you eliminated them. What happened to the tobacco companies when you realized they were knowingly addicting your children? Today, they still sell their products to less-aware countries, but that will also change.

What did you do a few years ago when you realized that your bankers were actually selling you homes that they knew you couldn't pay for later? They were walking away, smiling greedily, not thinking about the heartbreak that was to follow when a life's dream would be lost. Dear American, you are in a recession. However, this is like when you prune a tree and cut back the branches. When the tree grows back, you've got control and the branches will grow bigger and stronger than they were before, without the greed factor. Then, if you don't like the way it grows back, you'll prune it again! I tell you this because awareness is now in control of big money. It's right before your eyes, what you're doing. But fear often rules. …”

Thursday, December 25, 2014

Cuba prepares for Christmas with early gift from Obama

Yahoo – AFP, Francisco Jara, 24 Dec 2014

People wearing Santa Claus costumes give out leaflets promoting a restaurant

in the streets of Havana, Cuba, on December 23, 2014 (AFP Photo/Yamil Lage)

Havana (AFP) - Cubans prepared Wednesday to celebrate Christmas, a resurgent holiday banned for 38 years by the communist government, with an early gift from US President Barack Obama: a historic rapprochement.

Across the island, houses, restaurants, supermarkets, hotels and state-run stores have put up Christmas decorations, embracing a holiday eliminated by Fidel Castro soon after he came to power in the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and declared Cuba an atheist state.

"El Comandante" restored Christmas in 1998 after a landmark visit by pope John Paul II.

A Christmas tree adorns the lobby of a

hotel in Havana, Cuba, on December 23,

2014 (AFP Photo/Yamil Lage)

After an initially hesitant revival, the Christmas spirit is once again booming on the island.

"Christmas was a very deep-rooted tradition in Cuba. It was interrupted for 38 years, which is no small thing, and yet it made a comeback," said the secretary of Cuba's Conference of Bishops, Jose Felix Perez.

In Havana's old city, Santas brave the Caribbean heat in bushy white beards and red suits to hand out restaurant flyers alongside Mrs Clauses wearing decidedly skimpier red outfits -- a scene that would have been unthinkable under Fidel.

On the streets of the capital, the dashboards of cars are decked out with Santas, wreaths and mini Christmas trees.

Less playful decorations adorn the gates and courtyards of foreign embassies and the US interests section, set to regain its status as an embassy under last week's watershed announcement by Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro, who took over from his big brother Fidel in 2006.

The thawing of the two countries' Cold War animosity has raised many Cubans' hopes for an economic revival in a country scarred by the "special period" of hunger and shortages in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This year, Perez said, "everything the two presidents announced is giving people hope that their lives will get better and there will be greater understanding."

In this country where Catholicism has long co-existed with local traditions that draw on both Christianity and African religions, state-run stores are brimming with Christmas gift baskets and restaurants and hotels are offering sumptuous Christmas dinners.

At the Ambos Mundos, where the great American writer Ernest Hemingway once lived, the four-course meal costs $40 -- twice the average monthly salary of around $20.

"Before there were no Christmas decorations. All this is totally new," a Latin American diplomat told AFP.

Communist Christmas

New Year's was long celebrated as the main holiday in Cuba, bolstered by the revolutionary significance of the date: January 1, 1959, is the day Castro's forces ousted dictator Fulgencio Batista.

A couple wearing Santa Claus costumes greet a little boy as they give out

leaflets promoting a restaurant in the streets of Havana, Cuba, on December 23,

2014 (AFP Photo/Yamil Lage)

Starting in 1960, December 25 was declared a working day.

Christians celebrated in secret, hoping to evade detection by the Revolutionary Defense Committees (CDRs) deployed across the country.

Even after the holiday was restored, Christmas celebrations were muted until Fidel handed over power amid a health crisis.

In 2010 the Cuban government opened talks with the Church, which led to the release of 130 political prisoners and the return of Church buildings confiscated in the 1960s.

Later that year the main architect of the detente, Cardinal Jaime Ortega, celebrated Cuba's first Christmas mass since 1959 inside a prison.

Today, Cuban bishops broadcast Christmas messages on television.

In a further goodwill gesture toward the Church, Raul Castro also restored Good Friday as a holiday when pope Benedict XVI visited the island in 2012.