As the year speeds to an ever quickening end we find ourselves approaching winter and the festive season, I am as ever fascinated by the complexity and conflicting ideas of what is potentially best for us, individually and as a society, and what we choose.
As you may have gathered, since I recognised this as a recourse available to all, I have been looking to Mother Earth for guidance. She knows best, as far as I’m concerned, she’s been successful in her travels for eons, we on the other hand are absolute beginners.
Having shifted from autumn to winter in one quick step, we have also shifted, metaphorically on our life time journey, from life to death. This was shown to us as we journey through Scorpio and Samhian, or Hallowe’en as we have come to know it.
Mother Earth has shut herself down and is presently hibernating till spring. This time of nurturing and stillness is her invitation to us, as she holds up the mirror. Just as we sleep eight hours of the day, here we are also at our best if we slow our lives down for four months of the year. This rejuvenates us in readiness for the energy needed for spring.
Why do we resist this? As the hours of darkness increase it seems so does our fear. As our unresolved conflicts embed trauma into each generation in turn, we gain no understanding if what is going on inside for us. It becomes so painful, so hard to acknowledge we turn our backs on it all. The less we understand ourselves the more we lack any resources or ability to heal. The more pain we feel the less we can see what would serve us and the more reluctance we have to change and leave the destructive path we are on.
This month, we are invited to go within to find our truth. If we are willing, it takes us on a spiritual journey, if we have the eyes to see it and ears to hear it. However, while we remain blind and deaf to our inner wisdom our arrow shoots into the darkness and is lost.
The centaur that shoots his fiery arrow in his search for truth is the symbol of Sagittarius and its opposition, the sign that offers balance to the process, is Gemini. This sign of information and communication, stops us from going too ‘out there’ or becoming too ungrounded. In this information age we have entered, you’d think we would be in a perfect place to understand ourselves and what we need most in these challenging times. The paradox is, of course, that the more access we have to information, the more access we also have to misinformation. Gemini is ruled by Mercury, who is seen as the trickster. Here he is at play and he is alive and kicking in our modern world.
In our off-centred world, our left brain way of thinking and living, we have lost the wisdom that lies in humour, metaphor and the holistic view of the world. These are all right brain attributes (it’s not so black and white as this, but for this purpose, I am keeping it simple, a left brain view!) and using this way of perceiving the world, has got us into the challenging situation we are in. Life isn’t black and white, right and wrong, good and bad. It’s far more complex and nuanced than that. Similarly, winter and it’s requirements to slow down and recharge isn’t bad, we have just learned to perceive it that way.
The more we struggle against the suggestions Mother Earth offers for a better life, living here on her land, the more we look for solutions in places that have no connection to her or ourselves, the more out of kilter we will become.
As each year turns, we are being asked to come back into alignment, back into right relationship with our lives. We are asking how we can become more sustainable, but we seem to lack the humility ourselves, to ask those who have sustainability built into their culture.
Those, who the modern societies have oppressed in order to create this insane, unsustainable lifestyle, are the very people who have the answers we need. The only way we are going to be able to fully seeing this, is either by stepping off our high horse and finding the humility to ask them for help, or if we are stopped in our tracks by unthinkable occurrences.
The irony is that it is the fear of what we are walking, or maybe running towards, which is preventing us from acknowledging and seeing it. It’s the most dangerous blindspot humanity has ever ignored.
While I am willing to open my ears and eyes to the dangers ahead, I sense that the only answer is within. There is no science to save us anymore, only the transcendent nature of the human spirit. For me, this is the time to walk this path with every cell in my body willing to open to the truth it has to offer me.
The more people choose this path, the greater chance we have of opening up the possibilities of changing course and shifting to a world full of love and harmony, truth and grace.
photo Mark Brookes
