It is an extraordinary time, experiencing the speed of everything as the months come and go, and the intensity of events as they seem to pile up on top each other. While I remain doing most things from the comfort of my armchair it still feels a little overwhelming. How I am going to acclimatise to life, as it starts to reclaim a kind of normality, is beyond me.
Then again, I can immediately see that I am resorting all these slightly over-dramatic words while at the same time I am able feel nothing at all. These waves of highs and lows are a new phenomenon for me having spent most of my life at an even keel.
I am not complaining about any of this, I am just commenting and noticing, noticing how what’s happening for me seems to be amplified when I look out at the world.
What I am also noticing, as I examine the time of year we are experiencing, that once again I feel we are missing a trick. Aquarius, the water bearer, is an air sign, the last of the three and is inviting us to think big, communally and globally. My fear is that the opposite is true. Once again I am being over-dramatic because it is not really a fear, just a comment.
Birds, such as the eagle, are associated with this sign because they are capable of sustained flight. Their bird’s eye view gives them a big picture understanding of the world but also a detached one. We, as a culture, seem to engage in the latter. This can be dangerous as Aquarius also is associated with science, our brain power engaged in problem solving our way through life, without attaching ourselves intellectually or emotionally to any of the consequences.
These are the shadow aspects of this sign, the positive ones are about the individual, having sorted their problems and saved their soul in Capricorn, coming down from the mountain and engaging fully with the community.
Forgetting these positive attributes has brought us to a point of deep crisis without recognising this or that we should take any responsibility for where we find ourselves. We have been taught to put our faith in the fact that other people will sort out life’s difficulties and that we are powerless to do anything, or have any control around these issues.
I believe the opposite is true. I believe science after decades of teaching us to disassociate, is now trying to show us that our involvement is key. Our engagement is not only required but has already created this situation and only our involvement with a changed attitude, and an engaged heart, will get us out of it. We would do well to stop judging others for perceived wrong doing, for perceived wrong ways of thinking and start accepting that there are many ways to live on this earth and maybe our way, with our modern methods, is not working.
While we engage with the detachment aspect of this archetype we are forgetting the big picture, the bird’s eye view and getting caught up in the small. We need to turn the telescope around from the microscopic view to the macro, bring everyone into focus as a whole and work out new ways to see and respond to people who live and think differently from ourselves, in our society and outside of it.
The choice is ours, learn to live together or die together and either way Mother Earth will be fine with it. She understands and feels deep love while being able to remain detached in one beautiful state of balance. We have the chance to reconnect and relearn, but we don’t have that long.
I believe in divine timing and we will reach a critical point, we may have already reached it, and then it will be change or be forced to adapt when the changes are made for us.
I am putting most of my energy these days into working through the changes I feel I need to address, internally and externally.
I have spent the last seven years writing my latest book which has just arrived on my doorstep. It’s a deep enquiry into our collective shadow and even I was surprised the answers that I drew from it as it almost wrote itself. I learned that if you pose a question and deliberate and cogitate on it long enough amazing results may come. I am going to continue to apply this to the rest of my life and see what comes. It’s a long uphill journey but it’s one I believe I have to take and relies using both aspects, the detached, bird’s eye view and the deep community engagement.
From my book and CD and the film I created last year I hope to create resources that will enable others to join me on this quest and I believe there is a great deal that will be gained from such an endeavour. Next month I talk more about how I am going to engage with this. I hope you will stay tuned.
