This time of year always sits well with me. We are moving out of the cold, quiet mode of winter and preparing to come out of our shell. The signs of spring become more and more present, and as we feel our spirits lift and then being flattened again by the constant news of war, finding ways to deal with these conflicting emotions is vital for our well being.
War is very much the archetypal energy of next month, Aries, whereas immersing ourselves in the blissful, womblike energy of Mother Nature’s love is where we are now. If we can embrace the energy that is offered us now, it will help us as we hope to leap into action in Aries, timing is everything.
I like to contemplate what is going on for us right now. We are only just getting to grips with the idea that the pandemic is easing. As we are gradually ‘getting back to normal’ - ready or not - this is exactly what I feel we shouldn’t be doing, as we have been unwilling to make necessary changes to our unsustainable lifestyle.
I also sensed that if we ignored this then the next ‘opportunity’ would soon be coming our way, the next monster would rear its head. However, I suspect few were expecting something like this or as quickly as this. But this is what we are facing, whether we want to look or not.
On the flip side, this week Frome hosted a Kindness Festival, the first of its kind and I was delighted to see how beautifully it unfolded. One event was called Kindness in Politics. This brought up all kinds of ideas, some fresh, some well-trodden.
I want to talk about a few of them here. The first was the idea that our modern politics has no understanding of kindness these days and has actually become based on cruelty.
One of the speakers, who is an MP, heralded the structure we have in Parliament today, saying it was the only way we could have good decisive outcomes. There was, thankfully, a tumbleweed moment in the room when the speaker finished. I was relieved to know that I was not alone in disagreeing with this idea.
My sense was that our politicians today, like so many people (and I believe our politicians simply mirror the voice of the people of the time) are so bound up in their personal story they do not have the capacity to see beyond this.
I see the world metaphorically like a set of Russian Dolls or rings around a tree. We can move in and out of these states from a contracted way of being to an expanded one. This very much depends on our own energy, if we are relaxed, contented and feeling secure then our personal boundaries can expand to an open sense of self. If we are feeling tense, traumatised and insecure then we contract our energies and struggle to see beyond our own personal life. This can work collectively also, for communities or nations.
I believe our politicians have a tiny perspective of the world. They are an elitist, privileged sector of society (and those not born into this sphere are quickly swallowed up into this mindset) that keeps itself bound together behind huge iron gates, physical and emotional. Brought up, mostly, in our public schools, they are introduced to a world based on cruelty and bereft of any emotional intelligence or awareness. This is what they know and this is what they continue to create around them, a world of power and control.
The public that have also been brought up in a world of cruelty and devoid of love, because of the systems that have been built on these painful ideologies, continue to vote them in because that is what they know, and change can often seem even more scary.
This life we have built has become normalised and so we begin to believe it is good and right. When people in different cultures hold opposing beliefs, this can feel threatening and so we believe they must be in the wrong.
I am fascinated by this as I always like to look at the widest perspective possible. That is the nature of having five planets in Pisces. Pisces is the last phase in the yearly journey and using the Russian dolls image, it is the largest of the dolls, containing all the others within it.
I had an interesting conversation, decades ago, with a Christian friend. I tried to suggest the idea that whatever our beliefs about life and death, the truth of what comes before or after life for humans must be the same for all of us. I put forward the idea that if an alien could see us as a human race they would see the commonality between us all. It is only when we become stuck in our beliefs and dogmas that we think that there can be different doorways or gods for each religion or race. I cannot grasp that, we are all the same, as far as I’m concerned, we just have different views.
In this way I try to perceive the war we are witnessing on our screens from all viewpoints. It was said that General Rommel in the Second World War attempted to view the war from his opponents point of view, and this gained him respect as a General.
I like to view this war from an outsider’s stance looking at the West. I would see a society that invented the nuclear weapon. I would see a society, the only one, that used the nuclear weapon on its enemy, twice. I also see a society that leads the way in stripping the Earth of its resources for its own needs, bringing the world to a climate crisis. I see a society that judges other societies when they try and climb the same ladder that they climbed and then call them irresponsible.
When we engaged in the war with the Islamic State, they were seen as the ultimate evil, but I imagined that they might be reacting to what they saw as the decadence in our society, the degradation of the feminine being one of many other issues. Their reaction was extreme, but it only seemed so extreme as we have normalised the extremity of our way of destroying the feminine energy in our world. This has brought us to the point of destruction of the mother, Mother Earth.
Here we are again, in 2022, pointing the finger at a man who is acting out an extremist and terrifying agenda, without taking any responsibility for our own. This might seem greatly distorted but I feel that is the problem with our own distortion, our view that we are right and everyone else who behaves differently is wrong. I am not saying, of course, that IS or Putin are in any way right, I am just suggesting that they are mirroring our shadow in an equal and opposite disfigured way.
War is very much the archetypal energy of next month, Aries, whereas immersing ourselves in the blissful, womblike energy of Mother Nature’s love is where we are now. If we can embrace the energy that is offered us now, it will help us as we hope to leap into action in Aries, timing is everything.
I like to contemplate what is going on for us right now. We are only just getting to grips with the idea that the pandemic is easing. As we are gradually ‘getting back to normal’ - ready or not - this is exactly what I feel we shouldn’t be doing, as we have been unwilling to make necessary changes to our unsustainable lifestyle.
I also sensed that if we ignored this then the next ‘opportunity’ would soon be coming our way, the next monster would rear its head. However, I suspect few were expecting something like this or as quickly as this. But this is what we are facing, whether we want to look or not.
On the flip side, this week Frome hosted a Kindness Festival, the first of its kind and I was delighted to see how beautifully it unfolded. One event was called Kindness in Politics. This brought up all kinds of ideas, some fresh, some well-trodden.
I want to talk about a few of them here. The first was the idea that our modern politics has no understanding of kindness these days and has actually become based on cruelty.
One of the speakers, who is an MP, heralded the structure we have in Parliament today, saying it was the only way we could have good decisive outcomes. There was, thankfully, a tumbleweed moment in the room when the speaker finished. I was relieved to know that I was not alone in disagreeing with this idea.
My sense was that our politicians today, like so many people (and I believe our politicians simply mirror the voice of the people of the time) are so bound up in their personal story they do not have the capacity to see beyond this.
I see the world metaphorically like a set of Russian Dolls or rings around a tree. We can move in and out of these states from a contracted way of being to an expanded one. This very much depends on our own energy, if we are relaxed, contented and feeling secure then our personal boundaries can expand to an open sense of self. If we are feeling tense, traumatised and insecure then we contract our energies and struggle to see beyond our own personal life. This can work collectively also, for communities or nations.
I believe our politicians have a tiny perspective of the world. They are an elitist, privileged sector of society (and those not born into this sphere are quickly swallowed up into this mindset) that keeps itself bound together behind huge iron gates, physical and emotional. Brought up, mostly, in our public schools, they are introduced to a world based on cruelty and bereft of any emotional intelligence or awareness. This is what they know and this is what they continue to create around them, a world of power and control.
The public that have also been brought up in a world of cruelty and devoid of love, because of the systems that have been built on these painful ideologies, continue to vote them in because that is what they know, and change can often seem even more scary.
This life we have built has become normalised and so we begin to believe it is good and right. When people in different cultures hold opposing beliefs, this can feel threatening and so we believe they must be in the wrong.
I am fascinated by this as I always like to look at the widest perspective possible. That is the nature of having five planets in Pisces. Pisces is the last phase in the yearly journey and using the Russian dolls image, it is the largest of the dolls, containing all the others within it.
I had an interesting conversation, decades ago, with a Christian friend. I tried to suggest the idea that whatever our beliefs about life and death, the truth of what comes before or after life for humans must be the same for all of us. I put forward the idea that if an alien could see us as a human race they would see the commonality between us all. It is only when we become stuck in our beliefs and dogmas that we think that there can be different doorways or gods for each religion or race. I cannot grasp that, we are all the same, as far as I’m concerned, we just have different views.
In this way I try to perceive the war we are witnessing on our screens from all viewpoints. It was said that General Rommel in the Second World War attempted to view the war from his opponents point of view, and this gained him respect as a General.
I like to view this war from an outsider’s stance looking at the West. I would see a society that invented the nuclear weapon. I would see a society, the only one, that used the nuclear weapon on its enemy, twice. I also see a society that leads the way in stripping the Earth of its resources for its own needs, bringing the world to a climate crisis. I see a society that judges other societies when they try and climb the same ladder that they climbed and then call them irresponsible.
When we engaged in the war with the Islamic State, they were seen as the ultimate evil, but I imagined that they might be reacting to what they saw as the decadence in our society, the degradation of the feminine being one of many other issues. Their reaction was extreme, but it only seemed so extreme as we have normalised the extremity of our way of destroying the feminine energy in our world. This has brought us to the point of destruction of the mother, Mother Earth.
Here we are again, in 2022, pointing the finger at a man who is acting out an extremist and terrifying agenda, without taking any responsibility for our own. This might seem greatly distorted but I feel that is the problem with our own distortion, our view that we are right and everyone else who behaves differently is wrong. I am not saying, of course, that IS or Putin are in any way right, I am just suggesting that they are mirroring our shadow in an equal and opposite disfigured way.
Gandhi said that if you want change you have to be the change. How are else are we going to get ourselves out of this continuous cycle of war and pain? It is time to choose love not war, starting with love for ourselves and then we can begin to expand this ever outwards.
