A Higher Ground

 

Looking back over this last astrological month it has been a very full, active time on so many levels. We’ve had eclipses and some beautiful configurations in the sky and here on the ground it has felt like a rich, full time. And yes, once again as we move into the coming month everything is about to change. And so it goes. Of course, it has been different for everyone, but the need, and the invitation, to slow is being put out as a call for all.

As the winter months take us on an inward journey, this first one is fuelled by the energy of fire and a drive for knowledge and truth. Our eagerness, as this is the first month after the death of Mother Nature’s outward physical journey, often over rides our ability to stay grounded, as we are born again to a new truth, a new way of seeing the world. It is important take we care, as our fervour is ignited by our personal need for truth and often we can lose ourselves there.

This is my fear, as I watch the world leap into action, making decisions based on what seems like clear truth, we can forget that our perspective has grown very small and our fear very great. The more I search for a truth that sits comfortably in my heart, the less comfort I find. While big decisions are being made for the greater good, though the short term may seem obvious and clear to the majority, the bigger picture, wider perspective feels like it’s slipping out of grasp. If I have learned anything from my explorations here, it is that a balanced and considered approach is always beneficial.

When we shout our truth from a place of perceived superiority, we lose the ability to listen and no one can be heard above the clamour. Staying safe is what I believe we should be thinking of first and foremost, however, if we never take risks we will never move beyond the comfort of our armchair. If we bring in laws that segregate society just so that we can get back to ‘normal’ before we are ready to be back to normal, then we remain on this path of patriarchy and control that got us into this crisis (and I’m not talking about the pandemic here, but the economic, emotional and ecological crisis we all face) from the outset. We would do well to see this pandemic as part of a whole story not an isolated one. My worry is that once the fury of this pandemic burns itself out, we will find ourselves deep in the next problem, bigger issues that are lining up like dominoes. 

If we can’t learn to listen to each other and gain from each other’s perspectives with kindness and understanding we may find ourselves falling deeper and deeper into situations we no longer have any control over.  I believe, that if you find someone with opposing ideas, you would do well to open yourself to your ability to be curious, to really try to understand why they have reached their point of view rather than dismissing it out of hand. And remember that to them you will seem equally wrong, ignorant and confused. If you are meeting someone who seems extreme then you might be sitting on the other arm of that extremity. How can we learn to stop fearing each other and trust that we all have something to offer, however out there it might seem? How can we stop ourselves from immediately rising to anger at the differences we face, otherwise we will all fall down our own rabbit hole however, right it might seem?

In a few days, the sun stands still at the Winter Solstice. This gives all a chance to pause, breathe and invite the light to enter our hearts. When we all take a step towards the centre, prepare to give up some of our righteousness so that we can listen to others, we find balance in our body and our mind can start to relax rather than react, respond rather than retaliate.

As the Covid numbers start to rise again, let’s reach out in love and kindness as we move into another harsh winter of isolation and loss and hope to stay feeling connected in our hearts.

photo Mark Brookes

Face to Face with our Future Self

 

What a month we’ve had, as we’ve moved into autumn and watching the leaves fall from the trees I sense the symbolism of what this means for us and our society. I want to talk about the beauty of Mother Nature and how she displays her rich spectrum of colour from the green of the heart back to the red of the root chakra and into decay. As we are encouraged to engage with this wonderful spectacle, it is important to recognise that she is also demonstrating that as we step into life we are also learning and then preparing to die and that it is beautiful.

How can we learn to trust this process without falling into extreme fear? Although this is inevitable, sadly, I believe we are being led by fear. I have spent a few years now embracing the wisdom that archetypal knowledge offers and this month is probably the most powerful and most important of all the months. Scorpio is ruled by Pluto, God of the Underworld, and as a culture we are still struggling to acknowledge what is going on here. The more we ignore this truth and suppress the fear it brings up for us, the more danger we put ourselves in.

I followed COP26 as much as I could bear. Nothing surprised me. I have always understood that it was never going to be the politicians that would lead us out of our crisis; it will be a grassroots initiate, communities creating change and probably led by the children first and foremost.

How can we, as citizens, let go of our need to trust those in power and see that they are, like the Pied Piper, leading us over the cliff. When we wake up and choose to put the power back into ourselves as individuals working within our community then we can choose positive change. 

If we are truly going to do this then we need to look at ourselves from the inside out and really understand ourselves, warts and all. It is time to watch our own behaviour, our ability to be baited and rise to anger when pushed, or even when we’re not even pushed. This is important on or offline.

If we arrive at the table and have no experience of dealing with our own suppressed emotions, which includes most of us in our Western culture, then we are just going to create havoc. We don’t have a great deal of time and I feel now, more than ever, we need to sink into the murky waters that this time of year offers, with the wisdom of Mother Nature and Pluto, and engage with what we are truly feeling. 

This takes work, a willingness to slow down, it takes being quiet with ourselves and an ability to listen to our bodies and our hearts. What are we ignoring, what are the feelings and thoughts that want to come up from the depths of our being, that we spend so much of our time distracting ourselves so we don’t have to listen? However painful it might be, we can’t turn our backs to these inner voices any more.

I learned on my astrology course that it was Jesus who said something to the tune of what you allow up from the depths will save you, what you keep hidden will destroy you. Such prophetic words and I believe that this is not only true on a personally level but also now on a cultural level.

The COP26, I believe, was a cop out. While people have said this time will go down in history, I agree, but not how we would like to see it. We will look back at this date and wonder what opportunities we let slip through our hands. Are we ready to acknowledge how we are failing ourselves and our future? However, I don’t think the main event was in the auditorium. Often, just like with the Edinburgh Festival, some people are only interested in the fringe events and I believe the streets of Glasgow held a much more important gathering of people, real people wanting to unite in their hopes and dreams for the future.

So I want to ask what are you going to do this Christmas? Is it business as usual or are you prepared to make changes that will make this Christmas a special one for all the right reasons, a time of good will and joy. You don’t have to be religious to see that spending lots of money does not make a good Christmas. We would do well to engage in simplicity and a gentle way of walking on this earth if we want to enjoy many more Christmases in the future,

That is my wish for us all and I can only hope that you will agree.

There is a flip side, as I believe everything has a duality, a yin/yang or positive/negative aspect, and archetypes are no different. The positive side to this archetype is the connection and deepening immersion in life we gain when we dare to peek behind the veil and embrace the world beyond the physical. Here, we can communicate with our guides, our ancestors and those who live connected to this aspect of life as a norm. It is very easy, I believe to get stuck in the fear, but when we are prepared to stop, breathe and listen we find there are communities in this world who have all the wisdom we need if we are humble enough to hear what they are saying and how they have been living for millennia. 

I receive daily medititions from Marianne Williamson at the moment, and today's mantra was 'a minute before extinction... or a minute before the miracle'

This is where we are and which we choose is totally up to us. I know which I will choose.

A Life held in Balance

Autumn has presented itself to us in quite a gentle manner this year, a gradual changing of the colours giving way to a beautiful vision, blending the full spectrum from, green to yellow, orange and then red; the metaphorical rainbow peace offering.

This moment is very much the time to feast our eyes on Mother Nature as she displays her final bow, the leaves turning and falling, before retreating to the winter months of hibernation. She is teaching us that while all things must die, this can also be beautiful. Here we see life held in balance, the days and nights are equal in length as we arrive at the Autumn Equinox and for the first time we can see ourselves mirrored in the Spring Equinox at the very start of our journey. 

The astrology mirrors this whole heartedly, as does this story when looked at in relation to the journey of the lifetime experience.

For the first time, after all the self-absorption that comes with childhood we are now reaching adulthood. This maturity allows us to step into our hearts, look at the ‘other’, the ‘lover’, and see that we all grow when we recognise that life is about experiencing ourselves through the reflection of all that we bring into our lives. We are deeply connected to all of nature; the good, what we think might be the bad, and even what we might want to call the ugly.  When we recognise that it is all perfect we might let go of these judgements?

The libra archetype shows us the scales of justice, of fairness. Here we are invited to recognise the beautiful idea, that everyone benefits when we see life from a broader perspective. This takes imagination and a creative mind, this takes an ability to dream and then manifest it.

The outrageous beauty that Mother Nature gifts us, for our eyes to feast on, reminds us that we too have natural way of being, this power, that we are creative beyond our wildest dreams. We just need to set this desire in our hearts and let the winds of change bring in all the things we wish to surround ourselves with. 

What would you choose? What is amazing is that most of us would choose almost the same things; a life filled with love, a roof over our heads and food in our belly. 

If these are things we all want why do we find them so impossible to manifest into our world.

I sense that we are so out of balance that we believe our current state of lack is normal, just as we are taught there is not enough for everyone. Even when we might have plenty we sense into the emptiness we feel as a collective, the pain of separation from Mother Earth, and ourselves. We feel that change is more terrifying than having the world we most yearn for, as we lack the imagination or experience to imagine the love and feeling of reconnection available to us all. Why else would we not choose that everyone had the basic gifts of life we all deserve and believe that this choice is somehow someone else's problem to solve. 

It is my belief that all these things are actually not that difficult to achieve if we all choose them collectively. If we look around we can see many individuals and collectives are already moving in this direction, it simply doesn’t get enough airplay; the good news rarely does.

We can create anything we would like to have in our lives, we just have to remove the blocks that tell us we don’t deserve them or that they're unrealistic; conditioning which has curbed our ability to manifest a fair world. This is the big issue, as these blocks are hidden deep within our ancestral history and the pain they have created has been pushed down so far we are not even aware of its existence. This is what we are up against, we live with the reaction without understanding where it has come from.

At this stage of our journey, as we arrive at our heart chakra, the half way point, we sense our life is held in balance. We are invited to be open, vulnerable and kind; kind to ourselves and those around us. We have not only lost this way of being but judge, especially the vulnerable part, not to be good. We would do well to look deeper for when we truly step into the heart it brings us the wisdom and the ability to listen to our bodies that hold all the ancient truths without the judgement of the mind. Here is where we all connect.

Rather than taking this simple step, we have chosen to ignore our inner truth and instead concentrate on listening to each other in all our pain. We have built stories that separate us from each other and create hatred that enables us to do terrible things to each other and ourselves. We just have to look around to see this happening in our society.

It is my desire to shift our reactions back to felt responses, to create a vision of a world based on compassion and truly listening and understanding each other.

When people hold a different opinion to my beliefs, rather than step into being right or different, I want to step into their shoes and truly see through their eyes, see the similarities not the differences, have empathy and realise we actually all want the same things. Once we stop putting up our defence mechanisms and our protective armoury we can find that conflict is a gift to seeing our way to a better way of working together, where everyone feels heard and can bring their truth to the table whether their views are dissenting or consenting.

Dissenters have always been conveniently removed from society as inappropriate and it is time we re-evaluated what this has done to the beautiful idea of our world. Without dissenters we will never grow out of this painful place we find ourselves in, where we vigilantly uphold our right to be right, even though all we continue to create and see in our society is inequality and injustices. Surely this needs rethinking?

Beneath the anger and pain there is only love, let’s drop the need to be right and listen to each other and our hearts so that we can begin to find common ground and common good.

Photo: Mark Brookes taken at the Jewish Museum Berlin

Feeding the Future with Hope

Every step we take, takes us a little closer. Whether we know our destination or not it is important to find joy and acceptance in knowing that the journey is preparing us for something. This month is all about the harvest, inviting us to collect the fruits of our labour. Having spent the summer in my new garden I can completely relate to the importance of honouring the gifts that pour from Mother Earth, all for free. We are also being called to work hard, get our hands dirty and make sure we are set for the winter ahead.

As the supermarket shelves are so much emptier and a general murmur of worry can be felt as to how this is going to pan out, I was very grateful for our town council bringing together many of our local food suppliers and those interested in how food comes from the field to the fork, so that we can begin to look at these issues earnestly. We are being called to look ahead, prepare for the changes that are already here.

Virgo, is that potential, the apprentice who is learning and discovering their role, what cog in the big wheel of life they are about to become. We are being asked to reinvent ourselves, look to where we have gone off course and how we can make the necessary changes which will allow us to live more sustainably on the earth. How can we create a food chain that is local and in line with Mother Nature’s ways and wisdom? It is time and the quicker we relearn ways of living and get to the very heart, the detail of what is needed, the less we need to fear and more we can work together and learn to trust ourselves, each other and our community as a whole. 

I feel it is really important to start using our imagination to create solutions to the problems we are facing. We are having to deal with many changes at the moment and it is up to all of us to look at ways of reaping some benefits from some of the decisions we have made. This is important so that we don’t get caught up in anxiety or blame,

Virgo is all about healing and what can be gained from being in touch with our body. I believe, that just to start with, changing the way we source our food and the way we eat, would be a huge benefit to our community and whoever wants to investigate these ideas; we may soon discover it will be a necessity.

When we are open to the power of imagination and what our bodies can teach us, when we listen and honour them, when we bring all this together, surely we will be able to work through any difficult times ahead with purpose, strength and confidence.

Finding our Inner Strength

 

So a month has passed since my last blog but time seems to be losing its meaning and keeping a grip on the passing of time seems almost impossible. So much is happening and yet at the same time, so little. I have said before how I rarely watch the news but lately it’s been impossible to avoid the news coming in. Like the sun that is at its full power the harshness of what is occurring around the world and at home, is being reflected whether its in the political, economic or ecological stories. It all needs processing in some way or else we become completely numb to it.

Leaving Cancer and working hard to feel everything, however, difficult that might be, we are now arriving in Leo. We are leaving the embrace of the mother energy and connecting with the father. The sun, that represents the royal seed, the divine inheritance in us all, asks us to dig deep into our individual power and wield it with love and empathy. 

One of the first books I read on the occult struck a chord with me when it spoke of balancing the masculine straight line energy with the feminine circular energy. It explained that this combination creates a spiral, the foundations of life itself.

I believe, we have lost our understanding of power, and are out of kilter. As the individual continues to maintain importance over community we are heading further into crisis. The masculine attributes, with the removal of the feminine, are masquerading as strength when actually we, as a society are floundering. 

Of course, this is a general view and where there are those who break the rule, we see pockets of communities flourishing and thriving. However, you don’t have to look far to see people in crisis, people struggling to hold back feelings of overwhelm or intense anger, 

I believe it is important to recognise what is going on for people and enable them to voice their pain. When we stifle our feelings we create a brittle exterior that does little to hide our suffering. If people are given space to speak about their fears, explain what is going on for them, just being listened to can work wonders. On the other hand, when we find ourselves on the other side, the side of the witness, it is important not to attempt to solve the problems. This a trait we all can so easily fall into. 

It is time for us to relearn how to engage with each other, how to engage with our community and how to understand our own sense of power. 

It is time to let go of our need to be right, our need to know everything and our fear of failure or of not being control. All these beliefs have led us into a cutthroat and competitive way fo life, where at the extremities of society, the have nots are literally being trampled on by the haves and those in the middle are complicit either in their desperate attempt to raise their status or in their silence. Only the few are trying to turn this around.

It is not my aim to judge, justify or blame, as I am very much part of this story.  However, it is my hope that by writing these words I, as I cannot speak for anyone else, can find a way, an energy within me, a sense of purpose that gives power to my words which will lead to a change in myself.

As I have explored, discussed and meditated on all these ideas I have learned that there is always an alternative if we simply change the direction of our gaze, reset our inner guidance system. The more I ground myself, digging my garden and connecting with Mother Earth, the stronger my roots are. This enables me to connect with my inner strength and all my masculine qualities, which can then secure my sense of resilience and help me to embody my power. 

We would do well to connect our masculine with our feminine attributes (if we have reclaimed them in Cancer) so we can find a state of balance, for power without love is weakness and love without power is what we see all around us today. I feel we have lost the true understanding of both of these virtues and until we connect to our divinity, our divine sense of self we will never regain our true power or learn how to wield it. How can we know what we don’t know?

If we decide to choose a different path we might find a route illuminated with answers. But first, before we make this decision we would do well do empty our mind of probable outcomes, for this will limit our possibilities. Then, like the Leo lion, we might choose to sit and tend the fire, allow the inspiration from within to rise up from the stillness, and listen.

Diving in the Deep End

 

Summer has well and truly arrived and this month is a hot one. Now this is nothing new but somehow as I sense into the extremes that Mother Nature is throwing at us I recognise the extremes we are throwing back at her. 

After the busyness of last month’s activity and energy, once again we feel the contrast as we slip into what the astrologers call, the sweet spot, when we can see, taste and smell the nectar all around us. This is an invitation to slow into this feeling state, after the heady, thinking activities of Gemini.

This month is ruled by the moon, our mother, the deep feminine wisdom that we all have access to if we filter out the noise from the brain and drop into our emotions, our feelings. Here we feel ourselves expand, tingle and who knows what can arise. We can begin to feel vulnerable here, and unaccustomed to these feelings, we generally run away and head back up to the rational processes of the brain. This is the world we inhabit as a culture and this is what has caused the crisis we are now facing on an increasing scale. 

This month is symbolised by the crab, with its hard outer shell and soft inner belly. For millennia, we have developed the former but forgotten the latter. Now we are experiencing younger generations who, although many are repeating the parents way, some are beginning to open up to this vulnerability and are feeling everything. This, with what is being handed down to them, is mostly very painful. Generations of numbing ourselves from feeling has placed our children in an unprotected place. There is little handed down wisdom how to find resilience to this wide open way of being. It is something we have generally neglected to have in our tool kit; it wasn’t taught so it wasn’t passed down.

However, I am not placing blame here, I am just trying to make sense of what is happening and how to move forward with the awareness.

I believe, the wisdom is there; the healing, the resilience, the ability to remember how to negotiate these times is innate in us all. Those that wish to participate emotionally in these changing times just have to slow, breathe and feel in, everything we need is there.

We also have the support of the mother energy. When we tap in she is holding, guiding us and connecting us so we don’t have to feel we are doing this alone. It’s not only that we can’t do this alone but the answer is in knowing that doing it together is the only way we can succeed. We are being asked to drop out of our ego mind mentality and dive into our feeling familial senses. 

This month’s archetypal energy is all about family, tapping into our roots our ancestry. When we bring all past and present kin and kindness together we can move forward with our community engaging as a caring, cohesive and  sustainable body.

When I saw an article in the Guardian that announced that the Amazon rainforest is now emitting more carbon than it is absorbing, my heart sank. We speak of tipping points and targets but this is a moment, I feel, this requires some time for reflection. A time to consider with our heads and sense with our hearts, what comes up for me? 

After a lifetime of suppressing emotions, a way of being, handed down by my family’s need to protect itself again religious and racial persecution, I have chosen - as this persecution isn’t something I experience, just a collective trauma embedded in my body - to attempt to break the ingrained patterning and learn to feel again.

Knowing I am one of many, a whole community of people treading this path, makes it easier. However, the emotions that are released, even though they are highly controlled, as is my way, feel like a volcano on a ticking bomb, beautifully in sync with the timing our environment is currently working on.

Listening to Greta’s clear and beautiful statement at the Austrian World Summit, spoke to so many as she told the politicians what they are too scared to face; the fact that all these summits are just a smoke screen for appearing to do everything while actually doing nothing, putting our Mercurial jester in the headlines once more.

The changes will never happen if we expect our leaders to do it for us. This was never going to be easy, it will be painful, scary and messy but it is for us to wake up to and lead them, show them how to come back to their hearts as we come back to ours.      

I hope you feel this too and are willing to dive in.

Rewriting our Story

 

As the year gets close to the half way point, I like to reflect on the different cycles in our lives and how they impact us, whether they are the turn of the day to night, or the phases of the moon or the yearly cycle, each have their unique qualities but each also reflect each other.

The solstices for me hold huge portent and this one never more so. The archetypal wisdom that this month holds is all about the twins, the understanding of the two states that we inhabit, the physical and the limitless. 

I believe, that when the twins are on speaking terms (as this energy is all about communication) then we can inhabit our bodies wisely and coherently. However, when we are not connected or even aware of anything beyond our physical minds then we become the arrogant king, who isn’t aware that they have lost all their power.
Ruled by Mercury, this god is the jester, the fool who plays the gods against each other because only he can flit from one realm to the other, carrying messages of wisdom or folly. It is left to us to decipher which the messages contain.

Sadly, we now inhabit a world that is caught up in a whirlwind of too much information with no guidance system to help us know what to believe and what to discard. The only guidance we had we threw out with the bathwater centuries ago when we went down the path that crushed the emotional wisdom that we hold in our body, in particular in our heart and our gut. 

Of course we are not to blame, we chose this journey as an experience of being human (as we have done many times before) so that we could choose to take the hero’s journey, through the dark night of the soul and find our way home.

We can only do this if we face all aspects of ourselves, the issues that are easy and those that are difficult, and decide to raise our awareness above the mindset of the arrogant king. Then we can climb down from our pedestal to understand what it is to be the wise fool. As the jester we can regain our sense of humour and expand our consciousness. From this vantage point we can start to grow, to communicate as whole human beings and find the balance we need to be able to listen to our inner guidance. 

I watch despondently, yet another G7 Summit, as the information, and our sloth-like actions start to stack up against us. Our ability to make the necessary changes we need to right the misjudgements of previous actions against our environment seems painfully lacking. 

My sense is that our only chance is to start believing in magic; what happens when we work together and imagine our way out of this crisis with our hearts, minds and bodies wide open to ideas beyond the usual tried and tested formulae. We need something right out of the box.

We will soon arrive at the Summer Solstice and begin the journey, once more, into the long, dark nights. Let’s hope this year we might stop running away from what needs to be done, and just begin to step into this without fear of making changes and without blaming others to such an extent we prevent ourselves from taking any personal action. We can only do this together with full self-responsibility and determination.

The Land Speaks; But Who is Listening?

 What a spring we are having. Nothing like last year; a proper spring with rain and sun and even some hail! This time of year is always so beautiful whatever the weather. For me, it’s even more special because I know it’s fundamental to who I am and who I am not. When Mother Nature comes to life and expresses herself in this incredibly abundant way, she is asking us to do the same; to feel how plentiful life is just in the simple things. She shows us how gratitude helps us to feel that our cup is full. This is something no material objects can offer. This is just a felt sense of wealth in the joy of being alive.

The more I grow into this way of being the more I realise how little I understood this, how far I was from being able to embody this - when it is all about embodiment - and how far I have yet to go. 

I sense the world is also struggling with this concept, that we have an in-built feeling of being impoverished and it has been handed down from previous generations so that the younger generations are not just feeling poor in spirit, many feel that fear is fundamental to their lives, and for some, that life is almost worthless.

This fills me with great sadness.

I know I have lived a fortunate life and have been lucky enough to see everything as an opportunity. When events are offered on a grand scale like the one we are experiencing now as a race, I believe, this is an opportunity we would be foolish to ignore. I feel that this time could be a really important moment to re-evaluate what is happening in our society. We have created real problems that are felt collectively and have been feeling for so long, I sense we have become numb to them. Is it possible that the pandemic has highlighted some of these in a way that is not just asking but demanding that we open our hearts and eyes to what is really going on in our communities? 

The other night I attended a zoom meeting by the organisation Shelter. They spoke about the struggles suffered by a high number of our population in this country who are not having their basic needs met, who are living in substandard living conditions with no feeling of security in their tenure, paying high rents and are terrified of speaking out for fear of eviction.

On the other side we have landlords terrified of their tenants that they are going to damage their property or refuse to pay rent or are just bad people.

It’s a shocking state of affairs. Our basic needs are all wrapped up in how we live, our homes, our security and our ability to put food on the table. If this lacks stability or worse, is non-existent for a high proportion of people in this country, then we are a country in crisis, It is time to truly own this and decide as a nation that a we cannot continue like this if we want our children to grow up healthy and with abundance in their hearts.. 

Watching what is going on in Jerusalem at the moment, my heart feels overwhelmed with grief. The situation there, in what I believe is the spiritual heart of the world, acts as a mirror for us and it is a perfect way, if we can view the issues objectively, by looking through someone else's eyes, to look at ourselves.

I do believe we have a choice, I believe we can decide to turn things around. We might choose to start looking at our relationship to our humanity, our inability to feel the plight of others. If we did, might we be prepared to stand up and do something about it as a nation? This general sense of lacking in empathy can be reflected in our relationship with Mother Earth; the way we are blind to the wake of destruction we create and dissociated from the fact that this could bring about our own destruction. Are our senses so frozen that we cannot wake up to this reality? 

I believe that through limitation comes expansion, yet if we are determined to simply get back to normal after the pandemic and miss this huge opportunity for change, what will it take to shake us out of our malaise?

I know I am not alone in wanting to do something but feeling too small and insignificant, against the tide of collective inertia, to make the shift we so desperately need. 

I can only trust that by continuing to connect with Mother Earth and her limitless bounty, she will show me how, from this place of rootedness, to move into action in a way that has a power born out of peace and grace. It is the children who will show us the way and so I entreat you to plug in, feel the life force of Mother Nature within, and follow their lead.

A Fresh Start

I love this time of year! Like a jack-in-a-box I feel like my energy is rejuvenated and the warm sunshine gets me out with a renewed enthusiasm for life. This is exactly what Mother Nature does to us and as we turn the wheel once more back to the beginning of the seasonal year after a long time in hibernation we are being asked to jump into action, get busy and get creative.

    And what a time of hibernation we have had, a time of such restriction and extreme on every level.

This has felt so frustrating for many, painful and traumatic for others and this is important to acknowledge. There are others, and I count myself in this group, who are very protected by the difficulties our society can throw at us and have come through this time, not only unscathed, but having learned and grown from this experience. For that I am truly grateful but I know I need to look at what is going on here and how to give back.

    I have spent the last year, learning and exploring the concept of collective trauma. This is something that gets passed down the generations and I believe that no one is spared of this, living in our modern world. Whether we were the winners or the losers in the many battles throughout history we carry the pain and pass it down to our offspring. This means that the new generation have those pain responses hard-wired into our psyche and our nervous system without the actual experience of the trauma itself. With each generation being brought up under this emotional strain there is an understanding that develops, that this is ‘normal’. The need to heal or even recognise it as a thing gets lost in the chaos we create out of the conflicts we build into our way of living together,

    Each new year is a chance to reinvent ourselves, to hook into Mother Nature’s natural impulses and emerge from our cocoon afresh, let go of our layers of pain and dig a little deeper to find the gold, the love, below. Each year we fail to do this and emerge the same as we always were.

    What will it take to drop further down into the wealth of healing available to us all? We will only take the first steps on this journey unless we are made aware of the possibilities that lie beyond the door we need to open first of all. 

Staying in our heads, within the limits of our ego mindsets will not help us find this. I believe we would do well to drop into our connection to Mother Earth and let her work through us. This is the energy of the archetype that this month carries, the ability to just be, let go of thought and judgement and tap into our creative selves, the part of us that knows the way forward instinctively, just as the trees and flowers grow out of the seed, so we can grow out of the huge ocean of love and compassion that lies beneath the sea of grief we all feel or numb ourselves from.

    Let’s not fear this journey but trust it is a path that once started can only lead to a better way of living, free from the pain we are terrified of looking in the eye, and free to blossom into who we are destined to be. 

 

Mixed Blessings

 What a month it’s been. Like a dog on a lead we’ve all been itching to get out of this confinement and spring into action. But like all things everything has its time. This month has been all about preparation, as the buds prepare to burst out from the winter’s stillness and the baby is preparing to leave the mother’s womb; timing is everything. The last stages of gestation cannot be rushed and no one understand this better than Mother Nature. Spending time with her is the blessing and the teaching. When we feel ourselves pulling against her and try and rush our way out of this she gently guides us and reins us in, if we choose to listen.

The Pisces constellation shows two fish bound together by a cord and held by a knot at a central point. They are pulling in opposite directions and here we find ourselves in polarity pulling against each other. The star that connects the two fish is called Typhon and is named after a great conflict in Greek Mythology and where we get the name typhoon.

It feels as if we are living in the middle of a storm, and finding the eye, the place of peace, at the core of this is vital. While we spend so much energy pitting our beliefs against each other, pulling in our directions of righteousness, I would like to call people to remember that conflict is gift, it is an opportunity to come together and respectfully learn from each other and grow.

Listening to an online talk by an American Rabbi i was drawn to a story about rope, about the fact that when a rope frays and we weave the broken ends back together, this part of the rope is stronger than any other part.

This is our opportunity to choose to work together to reconcile our conflicts, to surrender to the possibility that we may not be 100% right and that the ‘other’, who we believe we are in conflict with, might hold some of the answers too. Then we can grow back together stronger than ever because of the healing process we have chosen to work through.

There are always solutions to conflicts, when we are ready to let go of our fears, our need to control and our need to be right. This is our time. Let’s walk hand in hand with Mother Nature and let her guide us forward. She can teach us how to listen, empathise, slow down and nurture each other. 

Bringing our High Ideals Together?

 

This month I have been delving a little deeper into the relationships between ourselves and our community and how to solve the problems we find there. Frome is a very active town, working to find solutions to problems entrenched in our society. This is typical of the archetype of this month’s energy of Aquarius and how we address it is vital. We can either remain flying overhead, seeing the problems and endlessly discussing our high ideals or we can come down to earth and really engage. If we choose the latter, how we do this is crucial to our success.

One problem has been flying around my head for a long time now. I am increasingly distressed but at the same time curious about the great divide that is growing daily, between our beliefs, ideas for the future, and needs for the present. This is heightened by Social Media, of course. On top of this is an inability to see people who think differently from ourselves as having any iota of intelligence or goodness in them.

I sense that if we keep moving further to the extremities of our way of seeing things, whilst still believing ourselves to be in the right, we will never have a hope in resolving our differences or finding any harmony in our society.

Surely there is a better way. I know we all generally want the same things in life; peace, love and a feeling of belonging and anyone who doesn’t want those things i am really interested in hearing their wants. However, wanting the same things doesn’t mean we all look for them in the same way. This is what makes life interesting though, isn’t it? Imagine if we all thought the same way, what a dull world we’d inhabit.

However, I believe we are living in unprecedented times. We are going through a transition, an emergence into something quite new. Like the caterpillar that goes into the cocoon it has to breakdown completely before breaking out of it shell utterly changed. This means we are in a place that is unknown, uncharted territory, but we are also at the helm steering and creating as we go.

Having this power in our hands is quite frightening, but as with every hero’s journey it makes us strong. How are we going to come out of this and are we going to make it?

Personally, I believe that healing the divides that have come between us is paramount. 

I sense we are in two worlds at once, some people have their feet in the new, some are still in the old and some are straddling both. 

One subject that is causing great conflict is our medical system and particularly the virus and the vaccines that are being created to combat it. I am fascinated by the vitriol, the verbal abuse that is being hurled around and interestingly it is dividing sections of society I would have usually imagined, in most other circumstances, batting for the same team. My understanding is that much of the vitriol is created by the potential the Internet has to distort and muddy the truth. I am not going to go there.

What I want to consider is the fact that we are on the cusp of a new way of seeing the world, much like when the discovery was made that the world was round. I guess that for a long time both beliefs were held by many, until the new information became a norm (even though some, even today, dispute it).

Our world of medicine, for the last few decades, has been constructed around a world that only considers the physical dimensions. Centuries prior to this, a more mystical, spiritual view of healing was embraced. Although some held onto this ancient art of understanding the body and spiritual wisdom available to all, it was mostly stamped to by the witch burnings over the centuries. This created a fear around any use of, or the ability to connect and feel into these ways of being. 

Now they are returning and many people are beginning to truly understand the gifts that are freely available to use; simple ways of connecting to our greater body wisdom and natural healing energy. In recent decades, when transformational healing occurred without the intervention of modern medicine, it was called a miracle. Now miracles are occurring so often, as more people realise how beautiful this way of working is, it can no longer be seen as extraordinary. Of course, there are still many who choose to remain cynical and that is fine. It usually has to happen to yourself or someone close for you to believe it’s possible.

I believe that when a greater number of people begin to believe in the power of this healing and it becomes a norm then we will realise that there are choices available that will simplify our existence. Preventative medicine will be widely practised and our immune systems will be strong and capable of staving off even the harshest of viral diseases.

However, we are not there yet and at the moment we have people standing in both camps, both absolutely right in their beliefs, as both are real, but sadly, waiving their fists at each other.

How are we to solve this conundrum? How can we grow our perceptions so that we can encompass everyone’s beliefs, the old and the new, the physical and the holistic. Both are true, both make sense to the holder of their truth.

Things get messy when we let others take a possible truth and start manipulating it in order to create more chaos, more unrest and distress. This is the state of our Internet today and If we hold to this idea of righteousness at all cost and close our ears to the truth that others hold and we will all lose out in so many ways.

Let’s listen to what others have to say with kindness and take steps to come back to the middle ground where there is room for all to be heard. I would also invite people, rather than regurgitating what they have heard on an Internet platform, to speak from their hearts. Who knows what might emerge?

Aiming High

2021, a year of hope and opportunity? I certainly believe it’s possible, and I believe that ‘believing makes it so’! This is a phrase I received in a dream and have woven into many of my creative outpourings. It brings together so many of my aspirations and understandings of where we are as individuals and as a race; one being the mirror of the other.

We have experienced a truly challenging year and although we are still in the midst of it, how we come through it is up to us, it is in our hands. These winter months are a time of hibernation, a time to nurture the seed for spring growth and this month, in particular, is possibly the hardest of all; the long uphill journey through the darkest of days and so much of the winter still to go.

        Working with the archetypal aspects on offer here, we are being led by Saturn, our teacher and guide but also our limiter. Saturn shows us our limitations but, through this, teaches us how this can enable expansion. 

We have had a year of limitations, and if we can choose to find the positives in this way of being then we can certainly expand our horizons, like the caterpillar who, after going into the cocoon, transforms into the butterfly. This, however, entails the cells of the caterpillar to completely dissolve into a fluid which is made up of some cells called imaginal cells. Imaginal cells are undifferentiated cells, which means they can go into a state of metamorphosis and transform into any type of cell. Saturn, representing time and death, is constantly inviting us to make such a transformation, to choose to see things in a different way. He asks us to find the joy in the hardest of journeys and to see death, not as an end, but as a opportunity to transform. 

It is up to us how and what we make of this opportunity. If we can choose to free ourselves of the shackles of fear, separation and conflict within ourselves, then we can create this freedom within our community. If we can respect the differences, choose to work together to heal the rifts between ourselves and our communities, we can learn to live with rather than struggle against the diversity and extremes in our points of view.

        Dissolving the fear, reactivity and lack of empathy we hold in our minds can bring about change beyond our imagination, but we have to believe it’s possible. If we make this something we can believe in then we can reach the top of the mountain and literally save our souls.

Capricorn, that sits at the top of the astrological wheel, represents our Mid-heaven, our divine purpose and also it represents our wealth and health as a community. Choosing to raise our vibration to such an extent that we make this evolutionary leap is our purpose for this time. 

We are stepping into a new era, the end of a period that has lasted 500 years, which is part of a greater cycle that lasted 5,000 years, (and another of 26,000 years) on our way to a golden age which, we are being asked to imagine will transform our world.

I believe we can make this leap and I believe that the more people who join me in this belief, together we can make it so.