Lecture - Matu Apiata
Sunday 25th January 2026
Three Keys to Soul Aligned Action.
Authenticity – Commitment – Alignment
Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you to the committee and Val for inviting me to speak today. It is such a pleasure to be on Platform with the vibrant Jennifer the colour is all around it is great to be starting the season with such light and joy.
As I was preparing for today, they have been bringing through lots of information about the way
this year will unfold. At the beginning of every year, I do ask for three or four words as themes or keys that I can use throughout the year these are things that you can use to assist you in making decisions or as guidance as you live you r life. The three words they gave me are authentic, commitment, and alignment.
And it was quite prophetic as I listened to Val as she opened because a lot of what of what she was speaking about is in alignment with the vision and images that were coming to me about this year.
We talk about the numbers and that and yes, I am going to be talking about astrology, but what we need to remember is that it is all guidance and information to assist us to be better. Now if you are someone who prefers to stay the same you may be out of luck this year.
2026, when you round it down is the Number 10 and10 is about resetting the Karmic Wheel. It is about completing everything you have been doing for the last year. 2025 was very much about the shadow. This year is about stepping out into the light. We have done all the work and as I was sitting there, I asked my Guides if there was anything you want me to say andthey said, “2026 is like being in Year 12. You have done all your study, and you are wondering what you will do now.”
It is now time to put thing into practice and that ius where the 10 rounds down to 1. We are beginning a brand-new cycle which if we embrace fully and completely will transform our lives.
I don’t know if you listen to any politics, I like to keep up with it and recently the Prime Minister of Canada said, “We are not in a transition, we are in a rupture.” And he is partly right. The rupture was last year because we were poked, we were prodded, things were brought to the surface for us to deal with. Now we need to figure out what we are going to do with it.
This year I have seen a number of clients who have been talking about their shadow work and the work they have been doing and a lot of them are saying that now they are healed they can move on and I need to correct that misconception about shadow work. It is not about healing. It is about bringing into your awareness that aspect you have ignored, depressed or rejected., It is about integrating into your lives those things that you are frightened of.
So, for some of us it will be an uncomfortable season of change. The rupture has already happened. We are now in the physio. If any of you have had surgery, it is time to get back on your feet and start moving again. Hence this year is the year of the Fire Horse. This horse is about galloping into your freedom, building momentum towards those things that have importance for you. The Fire is about the passions that you bring into your life. It is so important to embrace those right now because otherwise the horse will be running and you will be dragged behind, screaming, “Stop!”
I know it is not good to hear those words but believe me it is only because you are uncomfortable with change. And change is something that you need to become comfortable with.
I was given this by my Guides and these words come from Micbael Beckworth who gave a lecture to the Agape Spiritualist Centre. “There is a divine and perfect spiritual idea of you imprinted in every cell of your being. It is not something you have to make up. It is something you have to agree to. It is a choice to accept and, with the awareness of Gods will,it is to be for a greater expression of life.”
So, what that means is that you already have greatness within you. Our conditioning, the blinkers, the mask, has hidden it. Last year was about recognizing the mask. Now, recognize your greatness. We are now in a moment of great change within the stars. We have just experienced, and I will read this, “the Aquarian stallion is in full flight.” Now this stallion is where three or more planets all go into the sign of Aquarius so all those people who are Aquarians are in for a big year.
So, we have five planets moving into Aquarius, The Sun, Mercury, Mars, Venus and Pluto which means that the focus will be filtered through the Aquarian aspect of self. This will highlight our need for personal freedom.
You may be finding it now. You want to stretch more. You want change things, especially in your career. The restrictions you feel may be a bit too tight. For those who may be looking at advancing themselves from an educational perspective, you may be looking for something that may shift your perspective of reality. You may feel restless and indecisive, unwilling to compromise your truth and this is where your authentic self comes to the fore. We will not cope with or tolerate the b.s. Those little white lies that are often pushed at us.
The best place to see that right now is in the world of politics. If you don’t feel uncomfortable when you listen to a politician, then you need to do some work on you b.s. meter. The most important thing is to honour it and do it. Choose the path that liberates you and allows your spirit to shine brightly. If you are doing something that makes you feel small, I highly recommend that you review that choice. You need to make your light expand. This is what the authentic commitment is about. When you leave here you need to hold onto that light. That is your commitment now, to your awareness of who you are.
Out true self has never changed. If you are not a person who believes in reincarnation or past lives, when you are born you are born with a level of innocence that is still present inside you. If you do believe in reincarnation, your soul self has never changed. It is the same spark of life that was created right back whenever the beginning was. We were the Big Bang. That’s the party that we keep trying to get back to.
Now one of the things we also need to be aware of, and this is an important constellation alignment, that it is happening at the same time as Neptune enters Aries which will be for the next 14 years. Neptune is our spiritual light it is the one that helps us rise up as spiritual people and we are going to be pushed as to our spirituality.
This year will be about finding your light and keeping it lit brightly. If you are a Reiki person, you will be Mikao Usui with the staff shining brightly for everyone to see. You will be in the workplace, talking about the joyful moments you experience in your Church or whatever the spiritual moment is for you. Spirituality will also be experienced rather than studied, hence Year 12, you have done all of the study.
And this is connected to commitment as well. I used to enjoy ‘grazing’, course hopping, to experience as much as I could because I loved gathering information. I have been told that it is time to stop. Ram Das spoke about digging a number of shallow wells to gain as much as you can, that you didn’t need to dig one big well. My Guides have told me that is now changed. They are now pushing us for self-mastery, so you need to dig deep and study deeply and be committed to your path, be committed to what you are wishing to experience.
They have just said that some of you may be frightened because you may not want to commit to the same thing for the rest of your life. It does not mean that. It means that what you do right now, you need to do deeply. Through the experience we will find courage and disciplineon your path rather than spiritual by-passing. Goodness, I learnt this phrase last year and I didn’t know what it meant. It means ‘using spiritual practices and beliefs or ideals to avoid painful emotions, unresolved psychological wounds or difficult life challenges.”
Many years ago, there was a movement of positivity where you had to turn everything into a positive and ignore the negative. Well, it never worked. It just created more trauma, deeper crisis. It is time to embrace that shadow work that you have done and learn from it. Not just learn but apply what you have learned. So, using spirituality to sidestep doing the shadow work or avoiding the difficult feelings of being authentic, embracing the superficial sense of being is no longer the path forward.
At the same time, Saturn is joining the network of planets. Now I don’t know very much about Saturn but in fact, Saturn is about structures, it is about the things we put into play in our lives. Well, they will be dissolved. The structures that support the old way of being. We will be pushed to have the discipline for self-mastery.
I have a phrase that I am working on at the moment. I have a coach and they say you need to have 0% motivation and 100% self-discipline. Motivation is when I don’t feel like it. The gym. I use that and quite frankly after 20 years of not doing anything it is hard and I get quite sore, but 0% motivation says ignore the way you feel. You have made a decision about your health. Choose that. And it works. It is a little mantra that I run. You have to find your mantras that allow you to stay committed to what you have said is true in your life. I am working to becoming healthier. I am working to being toned, lithe. I have an image that I photo-copied, a face on a body and I printed it out and I look at it and go YES!
We are also going to build new identities. Val spoke truly about the changes we are going to be talking about ourselves. We are asked to forge new identities that are related to who wewant to be. Not who we were. Quite often these identities are other people’s description of us.I failed English twice at high school. I am what is called a half-caste – half European, half Māori, and I always missed huge sections of English because I am an army brat and we kept moving, so I kept going over the same lessons. I was told that I was not bright enough to do languages, that I needed to learn woodwork and I believed that. That became my identity. Until I realized that is not my identity. Those people thought they knew better, were trying to guide me to what my future could be. But I am in charge. I’m in control of my future not them. And if I make a mistake, it is my choice to make that mistake. And this year it is very about recognizing that identity for yourself. Who are you? That is the question to ask. So,Saturn’s presence in Aries provides lessons in calmness, boundaries, courage and establishing long term goals.
I don’t like New Year’s resolution. They don’t last and they never work anyway. The long-term commitment to who you are being in the future, that is achievable because, along the way, life is not a straight line. It weaves and waves, sometimes you get lost and then you come back and then you really drill down and then you go off and do something else but, that is life. There is nothing wrong with it. Stay committed to what you want to be, who you want to be and keep walking on that path.
Now one of the things my Guides talk about is the ideal archetype of the Spiritual Warrior and this year the Spiritual Warrior will awaken. We are entering the period foretold of being ‘the trials.’ I am studying ‘Transpersonal Psychology’ and part of that is I am really getting into trans channelling, and in a document, I am reading which has been written by an entity called Alexander, who is channelled by Ramon Stevens. Alexander prophesied that the world would go through a cycle of change after a period where society moves from a primarily patriarchal order to a new order that is based on ecological restoration, personal freedoms, respect for and sanctity of nature, peace and non-violence, and cultural renewal.
The Hopi call this the ‘Time of the Golden Hoops’ when there will be one government for the world. The focus is on the people not on the money or the corporations. Alexander went on to say, “The trials however will challenge the current systems and push people to recognize their true strength and the need to take responsibility for their roles in co-creating this reality. This requires a deeper discernment based on our own inner soul truth.”
Now discernment is quite important because we are seeing quite a lot of misinformation and malalignment of truth in the world and that is where being authentic comes into play. Being authentic means living in alignment with our true self when making choices and decisions that are informed by the source of ‘All That Is’ or the soul self. But, as Val rightly said, you need to ask.
I used to think that I was nagging, asking too often and they said “No, we practice eternal patience.” So, nag away. Keep asking. But at the same time, you need to pay attention. I have a little prayer that I say each morning. “All my channels are open to receive intuitive guidance for….” whatever I am focusing on that day. So that means that all your channels are ready to receive information from all paths.
There is a great book written by Pam Grout titled, ‘E-Squared’ if anyone would like to do a little experimenting There are a series of nine experiments where you challenge the Universe to respond to you so that you can learn that the Universe has your back. One of the tests was to ask for a butterfly. Just to appear and come into your experience. I was doing this in the middle of winter, and I thought that this would test them. So, I asked for a yellow butterfly. As part of the experiment, you had to put a time frame on your request, so I said 72 hours. It was coming up to the end of the 72 hours, and I thought, “yeah, this doesn’t work” and I was sitting waiting for the lights, and a bus was beside me and guess what was on the side of the bus – yes, a yellow butterfly!
That taught me that I was expecting the answer to come in a certain way so I had to allow myself to be open, so that is why I say, “All my channels are open,” so I will receive intuitive guidance from wherever I need to receive it. It could be a song. Could be a conversation that you overhear. So, pay attention.
Trials will include major social and political unrest as the old system fights to retain hold of its grip on the world. It’s like a birthing discomfort as the old fights with the new. Are you recognizing any of this at the moment? As Mars joins the Stallion it brings momentum and courage and a forward motion to our experience, activating a desire for a greater freedom. In other words, the horse galloping freely in its own direction. While this energy builds it is necessary for us to stay aware and hold the intention for the changes we desire.
Remember, we are the co-creators of our reality. It is not anything else imposing their will on us. This is our will. Be mindful of periods of low motivation as the energy shifts and adjusts. Hold your courage and listen to your inner guidance because this could be the inner resistance to change as the old releases its power over your mind.
Now pay attention to the “I can’t be bothereds” or “I don’t have time” or “Uh no, no. I need to focus on this” because they are forms of resistance. We will have some struggle to let go of the old. Anyone who has gone through some medical issues will recognize the need to let go of the old so that you can heal. And that is what we will experience this year.
When we commit to our path of development the path to liberation means that we willbecome more aware of our path to identity as a spiritual being. Not a human being having a spiritual experience but a spiritual being having a human experience. I know that is a clique, but it is true.
What was once a period of learning and knowledge gathering, we are being asked to dive deep into our subject and gain mastery over your path. This requires commitment and dedication to allow a full unfolding of our inner truth. We know we can dabble and we can play but, we will not experience the full breadth of what we are wanting unless, we stand fully with it.
The deep dive into self-mastery embraces the recognition of your true self. Here’s a bit of metaphysics for you. When you are studying a topic say mediumship, we study it from the perspective of a human watching and learning about something but in fact it is that we are remembering our true self because our true self is the meaning. It has already been here. It is here now. We are seeing our true self, but our conscious mind thinks that we need to be studying something so they will give us a book or a class or something and we will study that is to help trick our conscious mind into remembering the truth of who we are.
Seth, the entity channelled by Jane Roberts, spoke about the books we read as being the psychic connections to the person bringing through the information. It is the in Akashic records. But our conscious can’t conceive of that. We are too small in our thinking. So, they give us this concept of a book to study, but we are really connecting to deeper source of All That Is. What was hidden shall be seen. (I have tried to connect into that by having books under my pillow at night. It didn’t work).
In the light of awareness, we will become our greater selves. Be kind as we take baby steps, releasing the old conditioning and structures, allowing spaces to form new habits. It’s the old saying, you have to let go of something to create space for the new. This may be a time of discomfort so, be gentle on yourself.
On a global level, conflict will be seen as people are polarised and truth will be manipulated to serve global agendas. Remember that what we see are projections of the inner conflict weexperience as individuals. Perception shows us what is not truly real. Now this is a ‘Course in Miracles’ is teaching us; what we are seeing is a projection of our inner hates or secret sins. Those things that we don’t like we don’t want to know about, we project out. I have always seen it as a staged play. We are not able to deal with it directly so, the Universe helps us by creating a stage for us to watch It, so we see it in others, outside of ourselves. It’s much easier isn’t it to go “look at that person” than go, “look at me.” So, it allows us to learn the lesson and to be true to ourselves and deal with whatever the discomfort is.
Perception is built on judgment. Judging what is right or wrong, good or bad, light or dark is how we learn discernment. So don’t shirk away from those bad or dark moments, they are teaching you how to discern the light. It is important to discern in alignment with your inner guidance so as not be fooled by the old structures clinging to life. I love that. When they said that I could see it so clearly. The only way to overcome and bypass that is by seeking the inner truth. When you look on reality without judgment, you will see the truth. And know it is the source of ‘All That Is.’ You could call it God but, if you are not comfortable with the word God, then ‘All That Is’ is the same.
It is important to remember that the Source only wants to bring you joy, love and abundance. Anything else is the ego making reality in its own image. So, I will leave you with this affirmation: “I am available to more good than I can imagine.” You are sitting in abundance right now.