Dropping In

Life has got busy again, the sun is out and I feel that everyone is charging around hoping to fill every moment with wonderful things. Well, this is the time for it. This month’s archetype is all about the busy bee pollinating and communicating, using the air waves to get its message out. And we are reflecting this as humans, we can’t help ourselves, it’s the law of nature.

So how do we do this without driving ourselves into overload or using it as a distraction for what we really should be getting busy about. Filling our lives with joyous things doesn’t necessarily make us feel happy if at our root we are distressed and troubled. Unfortunately the times are getting so critical that anxiety is becoming more normal and managing this is going to be a real need. Our attempts as a society generally to deal with this isn’t cutting the mustard and avoidance tends to the chosen route instead.

One thing we would do well to be aware of is that the ruler of this astrological month of Gemini is Mercury. He is known as the trickster, the fool, and is happy to turn our world upside down in order for us to ‘get it’. He was the only Greek god that could travel between the worlds. What he is really doing is being the go-between, the communicator between the higher and lower realms, whether that is our internal realms or the external world. It is up to us how we work with this.

My journey for the last few years has been into the shadows, discovering the collective trauma in my ancestral line, that makes up who I am. It is in-built into us at a cellular level, and even if we think we have had an easy life as an individual, it doesn’t take much investigation to find difficult stories lurking in the lives of our forefathers. If we haven’t had an easy life then we know exactly where to look. We can ignore this at our peril.

If we refuse to connect with our inner or higher selves and block our ears to the growing feelings of unrest that are bubbling up inside us then we will remain ungrounded and have no support system to guide us through the troubled waters we are entering. We can always receive help from those around us, but there is nothing like being connected to our own personal strength and wisdom in these times.

I am going to spend my time this summer doing very little, as far as is possible, rediscovering the inner stillness I had before I started this journey. It brought up a lot of pain and sadness for me and most of it has been absorbed by my body; this is what we often do. This is not a bad thing, it's just part of the process and to stop there would negate all the work I have done. It is important to see these journeys to the end and not get distracted by 'shiny things'!

I am hoping that Mercury will be with me, laughing and joking, as he helps me connect to my inner guidance system, find a little more of my joy again (I never lost it but it sometimes gets buried!) and my peace of mind, body and spirit.

I hope this resonates with you in some way.

photo Mark Brookes

 

Enough is Enough?

When I launched my book in Pisces, my intention was that it would be birthed into an energy of expansiveness. I wanted it to be like a small drop in the universal pond that could slowly ripple out into the world bringing whatever healing and effect was needed. 

That was my intention. Sometimes intentions take quite a while to pan out, as I realised that the day I had chosen - because it was near my birthday and was within the realms of possibility as far as the publishers were concerned - turned out to be the day we went to war. That was not my intention! However, I know the universe works in mysterious ways and it is best not to question events that are far bigger than, and may seem to conflict with, our individual paths.

As we arrived in Taurus, my intentions for this month was to slow down and be in tune with Mother Nature. I was overjoyed to see my garden in glorious abundance. This is our second spring in our new house and the fruit trees simply exploded into blossom. It is very exciting. As I continue to expand my desire to connect with Mother Nature I couldn’t wish for a better environment to be in.

Interestingly, I realised that the more I connected the more I began to feel the grief of growing up with a lack of connection. I grew up in a city and I was never curious enough to pay attention to nature or ask about it and of course, I was oblivious to the lack. My education began slowly in adult life. Better late than never, I say, but the void inside me that I am trying to fill sometimes feels overwhelming and the task impossible. Other times I know it is simply way overdue and I just need to let go. At brief moments in my life, I have let go and the sense of reconnection was so beautiful it was life-changing. It is the beacon that lights my way.

With a background of personal abundance in an interesting balance as Covid shut down a lot of my work, I feel I am being asked to evaluate what abundance really means. In my little world all seems well. Yet, when I raise my head above the parapet, at the world beyond, the threat of war escalating out of control is slowly looming on the horizon like a dark cloud.

Where does this sit inside me? As we step ever closer to a shift in consciousness where we may choose to rise out of the mindset of control and aggression, what are we going to choose? At the moment we are choosing a life based on a constant need for more, to fill the hole that disconnection creates inside us all. Although I may speak the words of peace, what energy is residing inside of me? I know I have to keep doing the work of finding harmony within so I can put that out in all areas of my life not just what I appear to say.

This feels paramount and I don’t know of anyone who can honestly they have completed this task. 

The closer we get to events that seem terrifying, the more I feel we are teetering on the edge of a shift, a rebirth. I don’t know what the future holds and part of me feels, or maybe hopes, that it won’t be a specific event but more like a gradual dance of the shadow and light that we will create. We are all the choreographers and I know what I want my dance to look like, do you?

However, we are eight billion all making our individual choices and what we choose is completely in the balance. We have seen this in the UK with the Brexit vote being so close, France also.

I believe the UK voted out of fear and is now feeling the consequences and we are going to have to learn the hard way how to steer ourselves back to a way of living with love in our hearts. This begins with the light and dark being in balance, in harmony with itself. When we choose to remove the judgement then we can lift ourselves out of the illusion of separation and into the uniting, blissful energy of love.

This is the time to start, when Mother Nature is inviting us to lie in her arms and be embraced, to feel her love as she breathes out everything and more than we could possibly want. When we learn that we are all of the same source and remove the idea of competition and turn it into cooperation, when we discover that less is more and that the world has enough to satisfy our needs but not enough for our greed (words of Mahatma Gandhi) then we will start to shift. Then we will stop choosing war and learn the way of peace.

 

A is for Aries

And here we are back at the beginning again, the turn of wheel, as it spins once more heralding the Spring Equinox, the Pagan New Year. 

This represents the beginning of all things; the new year, the birth of the human life, indeed, all creative journeys.

I love this time of year when the buds are bursting into view, the energy is powerful and vital. It is concerned only with its purpose, a singular mission, rocket fuelled by that burst of inspiration. Here, there is no room for judgement, self-doubt or fear. When rooted in Mother Nature as all of the natural world is, then the act is simple. However, when we are uprooted, disconnected from Mother Nature, like many people living in our modern world, then we come into being without the love and support of the universal love and are born into fear.

Our Western culture has its roots in the Old Testament, whatever your beliefs or non-beliefs. As a collective this is our oldest story which most of us are brought up with. You would have to work quite hard to avoid it entirely, and if atheism is your chosen path you wouldn’t have to go back far in your lineage to find ancestors who truly believed. This is all part of what makes us who we are. We can come into life believing whatever we feel inspires us, but deep in our ancestral DNA these stories pervade our subconscious and our mindset, whether we like it or not.

I have been exploring this over the last few years and this has brought me back, time and again, to an image, the image of a tree. I find I cannot escape it, for it is the embodiment of all that we are and all the journeys we have taken.

I see our journey starting in the roots, in the trunk of the tree, connected and whole in our understanding of the world and our part in it. This is represented by the Garden of Eden. 

As we believe we were thrown out of this place of love, of oneness, we began a journey built on trauma and shame. We felt abandoned, separated from our home, our hearts and this separation created our new reality, steeped in duality. This was a journey that created conflict within, as our heart was separated from our head, and our head, or rather our ego, lost the wisdom of the heart and began to think itself superior. This is also represented by the masculine over ruling the feminine. - It is important to state that neither is good or bad, right or wrong but when we fall out of balance we can become judgemental. - In this way, we have lost our ability to live in right relation between the two.

As the centuries turned into millennia, the conflicts within continued to manifest the conflicts without and soon we moved from the trunk of the tree into the initial three branches with the three Abrahamic faiths and then with the conflicts within these faiths into the many branches and twigs. Soon the battles between race, the different religions, and sexes found their way into communities and even families until we have more people living alone than our society or our sanity can handle. 

Here we are, living as the very leaves on the ends of the branches as far away from the root as we can possibly be. Our inner conflict has created an ego so fearful and fragile, so stuck in its righteousness and self-belief, it becomes increasingly hard to  conceive of trying to reconcile some of the mounting issues with the ‘others’ in our life, who may be many and growing. 

It seems to me, we are standing at the top our castles, looking at other cultures who might do things very differently to us, feeling greatly superior and that our way of life is completely normal. As other cultures seem to become more extreme, I ask, isn’t that because we are sitting on the opposite side of the see-saw. As we teeter, either at the top of the see-saw, or on the tips of the branches waiting for the fall (excuse the pun) I wander which way we are going to go. Are we willing to recognise the position we are in and stop pointing fingers at others, believing ourselves to be completely in the right or are we willing to climb down off our pedestal and find a more harmonious way of existing with others in this beautiful world while it is still beautiful?

Expanding our View

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.

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.

 

The Icarus Problem

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. 

The Steep Upward Climb

photo Mark Brookes

So. as we bring another tough year to a close and set off on the new, 2022, with all the hope and eagerness for a fresh start, we know that the hard journey we are on is not over. I don’t want to spend this whole blog discussing the pandemic as I do believe it is on the wane and wish to concentrate more on the lessons and look to what is on the horizon.

As with all aspects of life I always look to the bigger picture, I try and find the widest perspective I can, knowing that we are always working from our own limitations and that is not a bad thing as long as we understand this.

I use the adage that through limitation comes expansion and never has this been so true. I learned this by watching a documentary about twenty years ago on Quincy Jones. A musician and artist, a leader in his field in every respect and a consummate artist. It was through his studies at a Paris Conservatoire that this lesson was conveyed to him and so to the viewers. It has stayed with me ever since, knowing that artists generally have a more expansive view of the world. I think it was because it was also that at this time I was becoming interested in the concept of quantum mechanics and its effect it will have on our world when we all grasp it. I am not talking about the mathematical aspect but the concept of all things being connected and the true understanding of cause and effect; something most people, before our patriarchal mindset changed the way we viewed the world, would have taken for granted. Those who live outside this mindset still do.

This is what I yearn for, a return to balance, a holistic view that takes the whole universe into account, not the just the bits the modern humans believe they can control. I would like to change the consensus, open it up, and to do that we have to go beyond and face our greatest fears. The truth is that if we don’t choose this, it is going to be chosen for us and the pandemic is just a small taster of what is to come.

This month, from an astrological point of view, is the month of Capricorn and is ruled by Saturn. Those that have been following my work - and others in the field of astrology - for more than a year, will know what I am going to say. But this is the beauty of ancient truths, it understands that we need to tread these paths time and again to learn the lesson and that each time we return to it, it is never the same, as with each cycle, we grow. If we don’t grow in wisdom we certainly grow in age!

Saturn is our teacher, our guide, our limiter. He lies at the extremity of our Solar System that is visible to the naked eye. So, after the modern mind lost its ability to sense into the universe to understand its truths, and before telescopes were invented, for this time we thought Saturn was the extent of the universe. It is the father, the time-keeper and became associated with death.

So if we are going to make this incredible step into the collective unconscious, return to sensing the world beyond the physical, we need first to learn the lessons that Saturn is offering. He invites us to climb the mountain, face our fears, our pain, and literally save our soul. To do this we must learn the joy in each step, and not try and avoid any aspect of it. It might sound like everything you would normally avoid, but that’s the point. Our society has avoided all these necessary aspects of life and because of this is facing its own extinction and bringing most other life forms with it. 

Although this is not all our doing, it is Mother Nature’s journey, how we participate in it comes back to the cause and effect idea and how we come through this time is absolutely up to us.

The pandemic has just shown that we are still behaving like children, throwing stones at those we disagree with and jumping to short term solutions that could be very damaging in the long term. How we come through this, feels important. Are we going to deeply listen to others point of view or just stamp on this who appear, for example, ‘different’, to be ‘stupid’ or ‘selfish’. I think these words could and have been used on and by both sides and not just about the pandemic; it is just the reactive behaviour of our culture today. 

I believe, we need to look to the long haul, understand that the mountain is high and a difficult climb, but it will be worth it and Saturn will ensure that we are duly rewarded, as the rewards are what we all yearn for in our hearts. 

Find me one person who doesn’t want true peace in this world, if the true understanding of peace was understood, who doesn’t want to be able to live in a society that can work through conflict in a way that doesn’t harm anyone. I believe we all deeply wish to be loved and valued and if we had that, then we would understand that it is impossible to have this exclusively. It is a psychopathic mindset who is happy holding their millions when they know others are starving on the streets. Sadly this is the path we have taken and we need to look inward to find the strength to turn this around.

We, have created a modern consensus where the individual is most important and we apply this to our wealth, our health and our lives in general, even our death.

If we are going to find our way through this great shift and truly save our souls, we need to grasp what Saturn is asking of us so we can step into the next two archetypes and embrace the holistic universe. This involves a good deal of letting go, a lot of hard work and the prospect of waking up to what is going on around us and choose the path of love that we can all walk together.

 

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