Bird's Eye View

This time of year can be one of the most challenging. It is often the bleakest moment, when the winter has already seemed long and yet spring seems so far away. Celebrating Imbolc is something we have, as a society, forgotten, in the busy bustle of modern life. But in these difficult times it is possibly the one ritual we need most if we are going to find our way out the darkness and learn to overcome our fear of it. Rekindling the light that we found at the Winter Solstice is an imperative when the news is overflowing with tragic events of war and disasters, and we can only see chaos and corruption within our institutions and those seemingly in power.

As I said in my last blog, this archetype and the previous one, Capricorn, are concerned with our structures within our society, and if we wish for change, we have to be aware that the old ways of ruling aren’t going to change by themselves, it is up to us, the people, to find new ways of working. 

The problems start when we cling to the belief that the people with power are the few,  those seemingly 'in control’. We miss the idea that they only have the power because we have given ours away and handed it on a plate to them. The moment we realise that this power is within each of us and what power we have as a collective, is when things will start to change.

The Aquarius archetype teaches us that we are each a unique individual, but that we only can shine (this is held by the opposition, the Leo archetype) when we come together as the best versions of ourselves to form a collective that brings all the positives together. This beautiful air sign, the last of the three enables to discover the best way to do this. Having saved our soul in Capricorn as an individual, we now know how to sort out our own problems and this means we can find the best solutions as a collective, and this is represented by the world of science.

One of the Aquarius symbols is the perfect mirror showing how we have got this wrong. 

If we see the image of the bird flying over head as the individual remaining aloof and choosing to feel separate from the world below, then this relates to how we are taught to believe we live on the earth; disconnected but feeling superior, 

How are we to break this misconception?

For many years I felt this image conveyed the shadow aspect of this air sign, leaving us stuck in our heads. 

The world of science (another symbol of Aquarius) gives us the potential to problem solve our way out of our crises. To me however, this was also part of the problem, because science was born out of our disconnection to earth. I am not implying that science is bad, but like everything humans discover, in the wrong hands - those disconnected from their hearts - it becomes corrupted.  

The world of science discovered the telescope and in the 1780s man saw Uranus for the first time. This planet is now the ruler of Aquarius, it has a revolutionary energy, and was discovered in the time of the French and  American revolutions. It was also the time that electricity was discovered, setting our world alight. This unseen planet, now revealed, set us on a path of discovery. One of the most imperative things it is asking us to discover, is our awareness of our collective unconscious. This would enable us to find the bonds that connect us all,  

The bird that is found in this archetypal story, and in the Glastonbury Zodiac (on the Tor itself), is the phoenix who has to die in order to rise out of the ashes. If we are to make the changes most people would like to see in our world, change war into harmony, impoverished communities into ones enjoying health and well-being, we have to come down from the skies and discover that we are of this world and not on it. One thing science is teaching us is the delicate balance of nature and how we are disrupting it to our detriment as much as any other living being in this world.

Our sense of superiority will be our undoing. 

However, as ever, there are always more ways to see this. What filled me with fascination is how a view can be flipped on its head. It was explained to me, that the idea of the bird flying overhead isn’t only a negative thing. It can be positive if we choose to see it as the archetype that takes the role of the witness. Part of our journey is about understanding that we are stuck in our heads, in our egos, and this has taken us on a road filled with pain and trauma that has been passed down over the centuries, over millennia. 

If we are going to heal this hurt, which seems like an overwhelmingly huge challenge, we need to be able to step outside our sense of being just an individual, a limited human existence. This begins with learning how to be our own witness. Like a mother tends a child, we can tend and heal our own inner child by creating space around our sense of self. This gives room for our soul to enter the story and help us to grow into our true power. Once we have opened ourselves to this broader view, this bird’s eye view, we will begin to see how we are a community of beings and a collective so much greater than we think we are. 

I have faith that there will be a time when we stop giving away our power to the few and spread it evenly to all of the earthly beings who share this beautiful planet with us, 

Then we can choose a kinder way to live on this earth, a way of trusting, caring and loving our fellow humans, and all who inhabit this world. This is so much simpler that we believe, but until we take that higher path and are able to see a better way for ourselves we will continue live in the small version of our lives.

My friend, Chrissy Philp, the author of the book The Golden City, called this time, as we move into the age of Aquarius, the Cosmic Mind. I believe this encapsulates the times to come perfectly and beautifully. 

 

The Hardest Journey

Another year draws to a close and as we embark on a new year, the challenges do not  seem to be abating. However, it is vital that we stay aware of our relationship to the world we live in and how tough our journey may seem. The archetypal wisdom we are invited to consider this month offers an interesting perspective.

Capricorn, ruled by Saturn, begins at the Winter Solstice when the sun is at its lowest point in the sky. 3 days later the sun appears to turn around and begin its journey northwards; the coming of the light. This is celebrated as the saviour’s birth, as a reflection of the coming of the light within us all, and we are invited to climb the mountain to save our own souls.

Spending time with such long winter nights, we are encouraged to view the night sky. We see the Pole Star, approximately the centre of our galaxy, as it holds its position in the sky, while the rest of the galaxy spins around it. We mirror this in our Third Eye chakra. At the centre of our brain sits our Pineal gland, that offers us a sense of stillness, while our busy minds spin around this point. 

If we are willing to stay with this stillness we can access our own inner wisdom and the wisdom of the universe. 

This is, of course, not easy. The journey to achieving this state of stillness, especially in these challenging times, is a hard one. However, we have Saturn as our teacher and guide. He encourages us to take each step one at a time, learn each lesson without rushing ahead before we are ready, and most important of all, finding joy in each moment, This is the art of saving our soul, making the journey the thing, not the goal of reaching the top of the mountain.

I have spoken of this every year as it comes around and although it feels like I’m simply repeating myself, I find that each year the same truth holds a deeper resonance, a new way to process and learn from this wisdom. It’s like when we take the same walk each morning, some might find it boring and repetitive, while others can see that each time it is different. The subtleties, the changing weather and flora and fauna, make each visit seem like new. This, to me, is all part of the joy, all part of understanding how life is so much more nuanced than we imagine, and how we relate to it can change with each rustle of the wind, and flow of the tide. 

I have come to realise how I have blustered my way through my life, complaining how I cannot feel the subtleties of the aliveness of nature or of the higher vibrations and yet here is the answer right in front of me.

Over the last 2 years, since Lockdown, I have been incredibly privileged to have been able to turn my focus online, joining summits and communities where the wisdom of Somatics has been brought to my awareness. Somatics is about connecting to our body wisdom, which emphasises internal physical perception and experience. For me, it was time to learn how to tread gently, develop a new relationship with myself, how to feel what was going on in my internal world and how to be still enough to start this beautiful journey.

Looking at the archetypal wisdom, Capricorn and Aquarius both deal with the structures that our build our community. I have always struggled with the institutions and social structures we have created in our modern society, and always believed that there must be a better way. I feel that part of my reasoning behind becoming a musician was in some sense a desire to ‘drop out’ from what I saw in the world. 

Now this sense is being brought to the fore as our institutions, whether it is the NHS, our schools, care homes, prisons, the list goes on, are all in crisis. Of course the main crisis is an ecological one, as climate crisis is at last being recognised.

As we are being asked to deal with this at the eleventh hour, my feeling is that we are too late to turn this around on a physical level. We simply don’t have the resources or the will anymore as the society we have created has lost its way to such extent, fear is leading us forward rather than any sense of wisdom.

The more I delve into this somatic world, the more I believe we can find hope by going within and finding a whole new way of moving forward. It involves a completely new language, new senses and a change in the way we experience and see the world. I have loved every moment of this new journey and it fills me with hope to know that more and more people are coming aboard and that so many are way ahead having been working this way for years, decades and of course millennia. 

Join us, it’s not always easy, but the best journeys are always worth it because they are challenging. When we climb the mountain, reaching for the best we can be, and finding fellow travellers on the same path, together we can move mountains, not just climb them.

 

Seeking our Inner Truth

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

 

Breaking Down the Walls of Fear

This month I have enjoyed many interesting discussions with my peers around Hallowe’en and what it means to them and to myself. It has been fruitful, enabling me to ripen my ideas into opportunities for more healing.

This month we are being asked to find our courage, face our fears and step beyond them into our truth and our strength. Actually, there is never a time when this isn’t being asked of us, but this month is when the work is most  powerful and possible.

It is said, that there are eleven signs and then there is Scorpio. It holds the deepest and darkest energy and this is not meant to be seen as a negative, in fact the opposite, it is our chance to wake up and open the door to the greatest opportunity for all humanity. We have the key right here in our hands and it is truly up to us; do we take the red or the blue pill? It is the red pill which will transform our lives and it interests me that in our culture red is for danger and so feared in that sense. In Chinese culture it is lucky.  I think this speaks volumes.

We have put a wall between ourselves and our chance for transformation, turned everything that was once seen as beautiful, auspicious and liberating into something that is now beloved to be dangerous, frightening and even evil. 

The archetypal story we encounter in Scorpio, Persephone is taken into the Underworld, the domain of Pluto or Hades. Here she is transformed from the Virgo archetype of purity and innocence, to a mature woman in her full power. Here, black is symbolic of the yin, the balancing energy of yang, the full potential to create, and red is the blood, woman’s ability to create life, as a god herself. Neither of these colours are bad or to be scared of, they are powerful and beautiful as are all the other colours of the spectrum. We have just cast them out, put them behind a wall and labelled them as ‘bad’ and to be feared. We have, at the same time, put all things feminine there too

As with everything, we can choose to look at this story in two ways. We can see this as a journey into hell or a venture into the unseen world. In this way, we can grow, mature and become fully human, discover the yin and the yang, the masculine and the feminine. Here we come into balance.

- I am thankful that we are beginning to gain this way of seeing the world as we have discovered and become fascinated by the mycelia networks that are at play which is a wonderful analogy for the positive way of seeing this perspective of the underworld. -

However, this journey isn’t a walk in the park, we face obstacles and initiations, like the butterfly coming out of a cocoon. When we overcome these challenges, however, we graduate from child into adulthood.

Personally, I feel, the tragedy is, that when we, as a society, put up this wall between ourselves and this wider view, we create a limited understanding of ourselves and our truth. We dress the wall up with distracting symbols and make it a children’s festival, (forgetting that we have become spiritual children) with pumpkins and witch’s hats, fake blood and zombie make-up.

Interestingly, all these symbols are all relevant, but the true meanings have been removed. What was once revered and celebrated as being sacred and steeped in wisdom has been reduced to pageantry and superficial scare-mongering.

We used to honour the dead, our ancestors, recognise the power of connecting with them at this time, when the veil was considered to be thin. Now we only fear them and imagine they are returning to harm us rather than to bestow their love through us. 

There is so much more I could say, but believe I would only be stating the obvious.

If we took a moment to look at some of the indigenous cultures in our world, learn about their ways and their wisdom, we could turn our world around. We have turned this beautiful festival, Samhain, with all its darkness and mystery into one that insights ever more violence and fear into a society that has already lost its way.

I wish to invite us all to tear down the wall, face our greatest fears, in the knowledge that when we do it together, we heal together (in ways we are only just beginning to discover just how beautiful they are) and we become transformed.

If we take this step it will give us the opportunity to move forward into a world we can hardly imagine.

The Dance of Balance

 

This month is one of my favourite times of the year. I love the concept of how cycles of time are all reflected and I see that autumn is very much a mirror of dusk, another favourite of mine. After all the outward energy of summer, Mother Nature is now turning in once more, the colours are changing and she is at her most beautiful, in my opinion that is. The year is, symbolically, dying but it is beautiful and we are being asked to find love and beauty on our way as we journey with her. Now the days and nights are of equal length and balance, and the beauty of this idea, is at the heart of the wisdom she is passing on to us for this moment. 

This is the first time that we get to experience a month that has an astrological opposition. We can look to the beginning of the seasonal year, the Spring Equinox, which reflects the birth of our life. After six months in childhood we are now ready to step into adulthood, into our heart chakra, look at the mirror, the others in our life, and fall in love with our reflection. The understanding is that we are being asked to see the others in our life and realise that everyone is just a reflection of ourselves. 

Scientifically, we see this as the human egg cell divides and divides to create one whole being from that initial piece of information, we too are created as a human race in the same way. We may think we are separate from each other but actually we all a part of the same being, the body of the human race; all inherently and genetically connected.

By learning to love ourselves we can find empathy and harmony in our world by sending that love to everyone we bring into our lives. The more I travel on this healing journey, the more I am coming to understand that this is the most difficult thing to ask of anyone.

Life is calling us to come into balance, to find the common ground between us all. - 
 The elements are continually doing this as the atoms with the least or highest atomic numbers are constantly looking to chemically bond with others to get to the middle ground. - 

It is easy to think that, as a society, we are all pulling in the opposite direction from each other. This is, undoubtedly, causing friction. While we become more and more unbalanced, our ability to find ways to resolve this looks less and less likely.

That is the pessimistic view of course and I am the ultimate optimist. The darkest moment being just before the dawn, can never be over-stated and this, I trust, will be our hope and salvation.

It leaves us with interesting times ahead until we see it for what it is.

The story of the archetypes involved here are the Aries warrior or foot soldier, (Aries is ruled by Mars, the God of War) who is quick to react, leaping to action without thought and Librans are the rulers hoping to create a beautiful and just world (the scales of Justice symbolise Libra). When society becomes out of balance with itself, then the shadow aspect of the archetypes come into play. The Libran rulers and judges, become warlike, wanting to push their ideals on those who they believe are against them. They are the ones who send the Aries soldiers to fight their wars for them.

This is what we are seeing today. It is the mechanism of Social Media (which has the potential to be, and is often, amazing) when in the hands of those in power and in fear (and I believe this is the majority of people, not just the rulers, as we have not yet realised our power, but we have it nonetheless) that can wield a divide in society that drives the wedge harder and harder.

I do believe our world could actually be in a state of balance, it’s just very hard to see.

I do think that there are people who do terrible things in this world and people who achieve wonderful things too. But I don’t believe it’s as simple as this. We can all make amazing contributions as well as behave in ways that are not good to lesser or greater degrees. We also have lesser or greater degrees of trauma in our lives which can make us behave in a variety of ways. I struggle when I see people condemned before their circumstances are fully understood. We are very quick to take on the role of judge, too quick, in my mind. We all play our part in adding to the positive and negative vibrations in the world and I would like us to consider this before bringing down the judge's gavel on others.

I believe, at a core level, we all want the same thing, we just express it in different ways and if we took time to take a step towards each other and find our common ground we would understand the others in our world much better. If we took time to empathise with people’s stories and rationals, we could find properties that would help us chemically bond far more easily than if we just remain in our corners, coming out to fight when we felt angered.

There is so much work being created by people who really understand how to make change, how to discover the power we all hold as individuals that can shape a world, create that beautiful Libran ideal, into one that allows everyone to have their needs met (when we truly understand what that means). This is something I really want to investigate more fully and will bring whatever I learn here over time.

I am, of course, only touching the surface of what needs to be said on this subject, but I do believe a good deal of finding the balance we desire in the world begins with doing the inner work. Can we learn to understand ourselves and our needs better so that we know what to ask for and also know when we are stepping into love and when we are in fear? When we close down our ability to see the other and are unable to find room for their needs in the world, we are in danger of creating as much dis-harmony in the world as those we believe are in the wrong. Righteousness is a precarious platform to put ourselves on. In order to remain there we can become single-minded, uncompromising and obstinate and often lose the ability to hear another’s plight and understand the journey that brought them here, in this place of opposition to us.

Personally, I struggle with the concept of the Western modern culture always being in the right when we butt up against others we believe are wrong. This feels far too simplistic when I see our society as a having an Imperialist, colonialist, racist, patriarchal and consumerist heritage, a mindset woven through all our veins whatever we believe consciously. I feel we all need to keep revisiting these concepts on a regular basis, whenever we are confronted by others in the world we are so sure are wrong. I am not saying that they are right, but that we should look to ourselves before we judge.

Once again, I am asking for people to take a deep breath, look a little closer at everyone’s story, our history and why we are at this time of such division. I, personally, don’t believe this polarisation is real, I think that we are just being drawn into this combative way of interacting because of the stress and fear we have created in our way of living.

Do we have to wait for the bubble to burst and for us to lose everything, or are we going to ease the transition and start choosing a different approach to life? Once again, the archetype of Libra hands us the baton and tells us we are the magicians of our own life, the Generals that can choose to wage war, fight for peace, or choose a higher road and look for balance and harmony, starting with ourselves. Then we can begin putting that out into our lives with the people we encounter daily and then start pushing that out further and further beyond.

Back to School

It’s been an extraordinary week, with change at the heart of it. We have seen an extreme change in the weather and a change in Westminster. Although I often feel that neither of these are important to my day to day living, actually they have a subtle but powerful effect on all our lives.

In this country, we have rarely had to worry about extreme weather conditions, yes we’ve had flooding and occasional heatwaves, but generally Britain has a temperate climate and for this I am very grateful.

Politically, also, I have been lucky enough to live in a society that is fairly open-minded and has been growing more so with each decade. However, it is important to recognise that in some ways, we have paid for this with our personal freedom, that is, if we have bought into the mechanisms created to temper this. I will explore these ideas more next month in my Libra blog.

Now this is all changing, and our outward view on life is becoming far more conservative in most areas of life. Brexit has curbed our ability to travel easily, our commerce abroad has been impaired and our view on immigrants has become harsher. Our new Conservative government, of course, reflects this and the irony cannot be ignored that this comes at a time when our immigration numbers are soaring and our employment sector is in complete disarray. The fact is, we need people to come and work here and yet we’re fending them off with our fear and inhospitality. 

I am keen to explore the idea that if we are concerned with what type of people we are attracting here, then perhaps we need to look more closely at why. Again, I might investigate this in next month’s blog.

As life becomes more challenging this is often what happens, we close ranks as a society and become more self-interested, nationalistic and fearful of those outside of our circle. Treacherous weather can challenge us in this way. It is something we cannot control and our patriarchal society is based on control. When we feel helpless we close ranks and the cycle revolves inwards. 

The archetype of the Virgo sign is all about initiation, preparation and purification.

I am interested to understand how this time of outward, physical growth has coincided and so maybe led to a psychological mindset that has become more inward-looking, more enslaved. I am thinking that if outer world view is changing, willingly or not, then potentially our internal landscape might be up for a shift too. If this is true then we will need to work hard to prepare for the path ahead. 

This is exactly what Virgo teaches. This is an invitation to get out into the fields, reconnect with Mother Nature and bring in the harvest, the fruits of our labour. It couldn’t be more perfect. Our need to consummate our relationship with Mother Nature, rediscover our power that she feeds us (but we have for so long cut ourselves off from) is long overdue. It is time to be the apprentice again relearn how to be in the world, offer our gifts and participate in a way that is sustainable and mature. We would do well to become responsible in the workplace, create businesses that are mindful of the Earth and leave little or no trace. 

We are being asked to develop a more adult way of working - as we have been behaving like teenagers for too long. It is interesting that the Virgo archetype also represents our sexuality. It deals with purification and preparation, and as young adults we are being asked to prepare for adult life and marriage. For me, marriage is about the inner marriage, a way of balancing the masculine and feminine aspects of ourselves. Sadly, this has become a battlefield for over a hundred years, though actually, internally, for thousands of years, and if we could look within to understand the inner battle and find our peace there, we might learn to reconcile this wound we all carry. 

It is a deep wound, which we carry as the head enslaved and negated the wisdom of the heart. The heart understands the nature of all life and its infinite nature; the fact that we never die. When we cut ourselves off from this wisdom we are left alone, abandoned and fearful. This begins and ends with our fear of death. We all carry the archetype of the wounded healer represented by the minor planet Chiron which is considered to rule Virgo in modern astrology. 

The time is ripe. If we choose this moment to go back to school we can prepare to move forward in a positive way, full of grace, both open-hearted and open-minded. This has never been more perfectly designed and created for our success. Transformation is not only possible but happening right now and I am ever hopeful that you long to be a conscious active part of it? I do.

Shining like the Sun

photo Mark Brookes

We have certainly been experiencing the fullness of what the Leo archetype invites us to embody this time around.  I have been writing my blogs for a few years now and as the year turns I often worry that I will be repeating myself each time I put pen to paper, or rather finger to key.However, I always marvel at the subtle differences each year brings and sometimes the differences are not so subtle.

This is mainly due to the idea that I see our life journey as a spiral, ever since I began this way of interacting with my view of our world and universe. I sense that every journey, each birth, begins at a point in space and time and spirals out, turning with each yearly cycle. We return to the same place on the radius of the circle, but having grown and experienced another year with each orbital return, the spiral energy takes us further away from our start point. Each time we are raising our vibration, whatever that feels or looks like; the positive or the negative.

This year, the intensity of the critical times we are living in, has brought this archetype to an all time peak. The Leo lion embodies the self, the ego and like all archetypes has a shadow and a light aspect. The Leo that fully understands who they are and where they come from can stand tall and confident with their ancestors standing supportively on their shoulders. From here they shine and display generosity and kindness to all in their domain. They know that to give is to receive and that everything they need comes from within, there is no limit or shortage.

This Leo is a king/queen in all the best senses of this word.  The Leo lion that embodies the divine masculine so beautifully lives within their society as an individual that shines so that the community can shine as a whole. (The community is represented by Aquarius, its opposite sign on the wheel.This is how we create balance.) 

This is my idea of utopia. 

When the opposite is true and ego is cut off from a greater understanding of itself, isolated and fearful, then the self is diminished in every way and the need to keep everything as close as possible, for fear of losing the little we have, becomes the mindset. The king/queen needs everything around themselves to feel safe and validated, so words like sovereignty become all important and generosity is only possible to those considered to be kin. This word is a moveable feast, it can expand and contract as our ego can. Kin can mean just our close unit family or expand to the family of the whole of human kind. The choice is ours, as is our choice to be in shadow or to step into light.

When I saw the news filled with the fires that were creating a state of emergency in this country, it felt like the call to action was encroaching ever closer. The sun, our archetypal father was and will continue to use its power to bring the point home to us until we are willing to see. Fire is a life saver and a killer, the choice is ours. If we will not respond to the gentle nudges, the lighter touch, then the darker energies will have to find a way to get through to us in ways that aren’t so pleasant.

Ironically, the shadow often seems like our only option when we are scared or feel we have limited resources. Sadly, this is hard and painful road is often the one humanity takes. 

It is the road we are currently on as a society and I count my blessings daily that though I am on this journey too (it is inescapable whilst living in this country at this time), I do not have to buy into the fear or the unhappiness it can cause. However, I do have to recognise that while I am here and experiencing this process, I feel the need to take responsibility for the negativity I will be holding. No one is outside the circle.

There is much beauty to be experienced still and this becomes more and more important to connect with if we are to create a society where everyone is welcome, with a seat at the table and an equally full plate of food. In this place everyone is served and all serve.

What many don't see is that part of the fear is a fear of power, power that is good, that is filled with love. To embody the Leo energy truly we would do well to understand that power must come from love, just as love must come from power. Both these words contain both strength and humility in the same measure. We have forgotten this, the words have lost their true meaning and worth and we suffer the consequences. 

I was inspired to write a line in a song a while back, (sadly I can’t remember where the inspiration came from) it goes;
We help the child who fears the night,

Who helps those who fear the light.

While we are blind to the fact that nearly all of us hold this fear within, and so constantly recreate it without, we will never choose to do the work necessary to overcome the fear. This needs an awareness that will only come if we are pushed to see the dystopian path we are on and our part in upholding it. We will see more clearly if we stop looking at the physical world we are destroying and spend a little more time connecting with a world that lies within us all; a world, and a version of ourselves, that has infinite patience, positivity and love for ourselves.

We are all powerful, strong and unconditionally loving, more so than any of us could possibly imagine. Let's rediscover this.