And when the black rain’s down in this cold gray town
I’ll be waiting at the edge of the night
— Iggy Pop
As of this posting at midnight Eastern time, the Sun is 12 hours away from its ingress into Taurus. Overnight and into Thursday, the Sun is on the edge of a sign — which has a distinct and unusual feeling. I’ve often experienced this as a door opening, but its more like a door I didn’t even know was there. Sometimes I’ve been able to come through. Other times something has stepped through to my side of the threshold or the dream window.
Other factors are contributing to the feeling. The Moon has just made conjunctions to Mercury and Uranus (which are themselves forming a conjunction, exact Sunday) and in a little while the Moon will square Pluto.
So, translated, the Moon and Mercury are passing through the hotly charged, slow-moving Uranus-Pluto square (exact 2012-2015). The Moon and Mercury are personalizing the experience, transmitting these far-out, sweeping energies of Uranus and Pluto into something that is vivid in its mental (Mercury) and emotional or sensory (the Moon) manifestation.
In one phrase, this is about how we relate personally to the actual sensation of big change coming. It doesn’t matter what the ‘big change’ is — what matters is that we are noticing that it’s approaching or that we are approaching it.
If you’re someone who panics at imminent change or even the possibility, you may be in a funk. If you thrive on control, you might not be too happy right now, because we’re getting a visceral glimpse of the future as Uranus-Pluto lights up like St. Elmo’s Fire. Working with Ur-Plu is not quite about giving up control; rather we need to work with subtler levels of influence, and dance with the energy. That starts with forming a relationship to whatever this big historical process represents, how it feels to you and what your involvement might be.
Many people are going from the experience of having no involvement whatsoever to a sudden confrontation with wanting or needing to be involved, yet devoid of all preconceptions of how that might look. I’ve heard from lots of people who know they have some role to play in whatever this new thing is that’s emerging, with varying degrees of vision about how that might look. Others have the palpable feeling that they have a role in shaping the process; that their time has come.
But I want to speak for a moment to those who are just panicking, who may feel like the ground of reality is crumbling beneath you. You may be aware that a good few people, religious folk mostly, are waiting for the apocalypse. I guess that’s one way to handle the approach of imminent change — like it’s gonna take everyone and everything with it.
You might not be quite there, not quite so extreme. What you’re feeling might be a bit lower key. You might be worried that you won’t find a mission; that you’ll be ‘left behind’. In any event, it helps, at the least, to admit your fear consciously — and to approach it as fear. This can take away all or much of its power over you.
Emotions, though, are encrypted directly into our cells, and it’ll help if you notice the ways that your feelings are running in a kind of automatic mode. This may indicate work to do: the need to go through a psychological process that will help you loosen up a little bit and feel your psychic armor soften. Remember that defense perpetuates the notion of something against which to defend.
There’s another layer of fear, which is collective. I think we’re all feeling this, to some degree. Many supposed leaders of our society seem like they are (at best) sold out to some evil force and at worst like they are bent on bringing everything crashing down on us, on themselves, on anyone who might be in the way. Many of these people are ghouls, in the spiritual sense of the concept. They are one step shy of reanimated corpses. If they seem cold, that’s because they are. If you notice that they’re death-obsessed, which means denying of vitality, yep — that’s correct. In the face of this, the thing to do is be alive. That, too, might come with the feeling of fear or guilt (they are clever little buggers, aren’t they?) though after a while you can get the hang of outsmarting them one thought at a time.
If you’re sensitive you might be noticing the psychic or psychological force that’s driving this destructive pattern, and it ain’t pretty. The way that you get drawn into the pattern is specifically by fear, which is a way of saying that this force can only work its dark wonders if it taps into something already resident in you. It doesn’t work to suppress the fear, or to let it throw you around; what often does work is to establish a relationship with it, as a first step. Then to one degree or another, you can make contact with what I will call the Healing Force.
Because the Moon and Mercury are passing through this world-changing aspect right now — an event that’s like a standing wave, gradually bending all of space, time and the course of events into its shape — we get a chance to get accustomed to the patterns of change, and all of the thoughts and feelings associated with it. It comes with the implicit message that we need to grow, to adapt and to let go of the patterns that got us here in the first place. And that’s where we now stand, here on the edge of the night.
Lovingly,
“I look out across the slumbering sea of humanity, and I whisper these words in the night. And I know that I address a great being sleeping still in ignorance of itself. I know that if the wild winter winds of your communication systems send tatters or fragments of this message echoing in the darkness, it will still be to the unconscious that I speak. For the conscious have seen the sky start to brighten in the east and have felt the warming spring of eternal life begin to thaw the hardness of their preconceptions.”
This article was the first I read when I found this blog and had inspired me to write an article on the Uranus/Pluto Cycle
The second reading did not receive the same impact of the fact that it is late and I am less concentrated reading. I had much appreciated thank you reading
Odysseus was trying to go back to his home. Makes even more sense.
Where ‘home’ is our heart.
Greekgoddess,
thank you for bringing in Odysseus and the Sirens!
Anyone else feeling this?
I am dealing (I say dealing because I don’t want to say struggling) with a choice, and the Sirens matter has been confusing me for about 4 years now.
When I go in a place that is directly connected with my choice what I feel are the Sirens, and it’s crazy.
When I go away, I am back to ‘myself’ again.
This is one of the reasons that caused me not to be able to act on this decision yet, but NOW I understood that I want to proceed no matter what, and that they are Sirens.
So thank you for bringing in this example, beautiful illustration. Next time I go there (on Monday) I’ll tie myself to the mast, think of Odysseus, and see what happens.
Love.
Screw that certificate, Carrie! Come on, remember Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz? Sounds like you’ve done loads of preparation for counselling already. Find a way to start, am thinking of Goethe’s words “Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace and power in it.” And then you’ll find a way to put into practice Sarah’s wonderful advice, that’s the important bit – not the certificate.
” If you can’t go the certification route, what I would suggest, if you’re not doing so already, is to go into some form of counselling or therapy yourself – preferably in a paradigm that feels right to you.”
Oh that I had the finances and time to do that. Unfortunately, I don’t. I have had extensive therapy in the past (which is where I learned how to deal with my stuff and why I am not the messed up person I was back then) and I learned so much about myself and people in general. I have had therapy five times in my life from four different types of therapists. Two were marriage and family therapists, one was an intense program for co-dependents and the last was transpersonal therapy with breathwork. I also participated in a women’s weekend workshop that was a more spiritually geared therapy. All helped me so much. I have also been busy reading and learning on my own as well as engaging in self-improvement as an ongoing process.
The feeling I am getting is that the fear I have of not having that social approval (certification) may be the very fear I need to get over. There are people without certification who regularly do counseling; they just don’t call it that. Instead they are called astrologers, tarot readers, life coaches, and so on. That direction is what I feel opening to me.
Yes, this week’s horoscope is definitely a positive one for this.
Carrie – If you can’t go the certification route, what I would suggest, if you’re not doing so already, is to go into some form of counselling or therapy yourself – preferably in a paradigm that feels right to you. This serves a two-fold purpose: first, it helps you see things from the other side, which can help to bring balance into the equation. Second, you have the opportunity to deal with your own stuff separately so that it lessens the chances of its coming into your work unconsciously and possibly counter-productively. What I’ve learned from my work with tarot is that you very often will get people coming to you who are facing, or have faced, very similar things. At times like those, the distance afforded by your own therapeutic process can benefit all parties.
(Oh, and – what a horoscope for you today! If that isn’t a sign, then I’m not sure what is.) 🙂
“But I think some kind of counselling training helps provide a structure to work with and also protects the person who is doing the counselling.”
I have had some as well as lots of classes in both sociology and psychology for my degree program (I graduated last Dec.) I am also taking some free classes online provided by some life coaches (a bit different from traditional counseling but I like to get a bit of both because that’s what feels right to me). What I cann;t do (because of time and moey constraints) is get certified as a counselor. The earthy signs in me worry that not being certified means not having that societal stamp of approval. So I doubt myself.
I have been on the edge for such a long time and my dear dear friend has tried to help the best way she knows how — bringing me into her world. I hadn’t really understood why it was that I was so borderline hostile in the presence of her evangelicals but your piece here, Eric, helps me reckon this energy. At first I just thought it was wildly curious that I’d find myself in this place where people, all good and loving kind people, listen to a band signing quasi-rock w/ jesus related lyrics. But I went with it and thought how lovely they are to take care of the least among us (like myself). But try as she may I just couldn’t return to the church as I became not only petrified but enraged. This is true for the latest dinner I went to just this past week, all good and kind/loving women and a glorious supply of fresh fruit (free!!!) and salads … but there was something sold here, after the food, that I couldn’t shake and this energy stayed with me until I read this post. Fear. Collective fear that forms the basis of their / our gathering and community outreach.
I was (am?) super vulnerable as my life fails to provide the wherewithall to support me and thus I’m led to this element of life. I kept thinking that they are good and kind and who am I to refuse their support … but my inner me wouldn’t stand for it. Fear-mongering writ large and I reckon the message for me is to breathe into my fear and feel the love. Right?
mm.
ps: thank you, Eric. My wallet may be lacking for the moment but I am now in this wonderful new place where I feel in dialogue with the universe and awake.
Cara CaraSusanetta! I don’t know Mark Coleman at all, must check him out.I’m so glad it helped you through tough times. Yes, there’s nothing like meditation for seeing how caught up in our emotions we are and learning to identify with them less, though it ‘aint easy. And I’ve learned over the years that there’s no such thing as a good or bad meditation, the mere act of sitting down and being with what is is enough. There are so many great books out there, will look at the one you mentioned. This is also really good: http://www.amazon.com/Buddhism-Without-Beliefs-Contemporary-Awakening/dp/1573226564. Buona pratica! xxx
Huffy: Ah, it was YOU! I remember a few months back someone posted a Sharon Salzberg link. I listened to quite a few, and then Mark Coleman, and a few others, but so far Mark resonates with me the most. I love the humor. Anyway, that got me through some tough times and I decided it was worth the experiment to try it myself. It’s not called practice for nothing, right? 😉 The other thing that really got me on track there was a kindle book called Mindfulness in Plain English, which I devoured and am now rereading for support. It takes almost the entire sitting for me to quiet down, but that alone is of great value. What has proven really useful is the “attimini” of pause between something arising and the latching on to it. “Hello Cranky Mood”, “Hello Ego Wound”… stuff like that.
This is exactly what I have found too: “However, without a firm foundation in clarity and intention, we might be acting out our own material on someone else without meaning to”. A dear friend recently told me “You’re not responsible for people – people are responsible for themselves, and if they don’t take that responsibility, that’s their story”. He’s a ‘rescuer’ like me, but is letting go of that role, and these words helped me so much. That said – if you have a gift like yours dear Carrie – it would be a shame not to put it to use. But I think some kind of counselling training helps provide a structure to work with and also protects the person who is doing the counselling.
Gosh – just call me Mrs Wonderful – just re-read my post – I’ve got that ‘editor’s bug’ too – but once you’ve posted, that’s it!
That’s wonderful, CaraSusanetta, I’m so pleased for you! Good luck with it – it’s a truly wonderful journey of discovery and release (though not everyones cup of tea!). Think I’ve posted this wonderful site already – but just in case, I’ll post it again http://www.dharmaseed.org/.
As always, there are so many amazing blogs and comments on these pages over the last day or so, and Carrie’s thread is really interesting – don’t have much time to read them with the deserved attention at the moment – but will do soon. However – Nicoise, I wanted to thank you for posting the wonderful Osho quote, it resonated with me so much, and was just what I needed to read right now. I’m going to copy it out and put on my wall.
Love and thanks to all. xxx
“Serving is different from helping. Helping is not a relationship between equals. A helper may see others as weaker than they are, needier than they are, and people often feel this inequality. The danger in helping is that we may inadvertently take away from people more than we could ever give them; we may diminish their self-esteem, their sense of worth, integrity or even wholeness.”
I have to disagree. Helping does not happen between unequal people; the “helper” is not superior to the “helpee.” Instead each of us has strengths that we bring to any encounter. The “help” I bring is equal to the “help” they bring to me and they have helped me, make no mistake about that.
If a person is at a street corner and they cannot see an oncoming car because of the bushes; they may step out into the street to cross it. If I see the car because my sight line is different, am I superior if I tell them about the car? Of course not. Helping in that scenario has nothing to do with superiority or inequality; it is just a difference in perspective. These kinds of label issues can divert people from doing the kind of compassionate service/helping they are good at. Fuck the labels and just do it.
We can discuss terminology all day; the feeling is the same whether you label it serving or helping. Both imply a desire to further a positive, compassionate world.
I read this, this week and it put so many things into perspective for me … “Helping, fixing and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul.
Service rests on the premise that the nature of life is sacred, that life is a holy mystery which has an unknown purpose. When we serve, we know that we belong to life and to that purpose. From the perspective of service, we are all connected: All suffering is like my suffering and all joy is like my joy. The impulse to serve emerges naturally and inevitably from this way of seeing.
Serving is different from helping. Helping is not a relationship between equals. A helper may see others as weaker than they are, needier than they are, and people often feel this inequality. The danger in helping is that we may inadvertently take away from people more than we could ever give them; we may diminish their self-esteem, their sense of worth, integrity or even wholeness.”
The rest of the article is at http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?sid=218 if you are interested in more about this important distinction in intention that I am working diligently to apply in my life.
“Seriously, we really can’t “help” anyone. The best we can do is offer openings and tools and empathy for others to help themselves. Listening is often the best “help.” ”
Offering openings, tools, empathy, and listening IS helping. That’s exactly what I am talking about. 🙂 I have knowledge; it makes sense to offer it in those forms.
To the Sina and all of us who are “yes men”, you are welcome to a group I started a couple decades ago called “Yes Anonymous” – for those of us who just can’t say “No”. Everyone is president of the group because no one could say no. There’s a daily exercise in front of the mirror: use index fingers to poke in the cheeks to form a big “O” and repeat saying “NO!” It is recommended to travel in pairs so that one can stop the other from saying yes.
Seriously, we really can’t “help” anyone. The best we can do is offer openings and tools and empathy for others to help themselves. Listening is often the best “help.”
Change? Bring it on. Please. As I have noted before about 12/21/12 as the “end of the world” or the “end of the world as we know it” – I look around and I have to ask: What’s the downside?
There are so many ghouls out and about that I “fear” there will not be enough change, but I know that Ur-Plu will “square” things up. So, I’m working on “outsmarting them one thought at a time.” Thank you. Eric, your eloquent and caring words are humbling and enabling. Please accept my gratitude. I have struggled and pondered my purpose for several years, without surely knowing the answer, but along the way I have cleared the path, shed much, and cultivated awareness so I can, at this edge of night, be able as this edge of night breaks into a dawn. For now, it may be a bit longer in the twilight.
JannKinz
About that centering, I have to keep reminding myself of this notion every few seconds, so it seems—to not get frantic even in the face of not being able to plot a course, as Eric advises Cancers this year. I have a very loaded 12th. I find myself sitting around a lot just resonating like a tuning fork to the energies going on in the collective unconscious. And I do mean the unconscious part here. The buzzing undercurrent is a huge distraction that is hard to tune out and not get caught up in it. It almost feels a little like the Land Shark on Saturday Night Live. Gilda just could not help herself and had to open that damn door. And then there’s the flip side where, in its own way, that drone is quite alluring and hypnotic—like the Song of the Sirens in The Odyssey by Homer. Boy, there you go, that reference just dropped into my head from the ether. How appropriate:
”Not too long after that, Odysseus and his men ran into the Sirens. The Sirens were magical sea creatures that looked rather like mermaids. They were known for their beautiful singing voices. The music they made was so hypnotic that sailors stopped sailing their ships, to listen. With no one in charge, the ships crashed into land, killing everyone on board.
When Odysseus heard the beautiful music, he was suspicious immediately. He had had quite a few adventures already. He was beginning to be a bit suspicious of everything!
To be extra safe, he stuffed his crewmen’s ears so they could not hear the music. He tied himself to the ship’s mast. That way, in case the gods decided to be helpful, he wanted to be able to hear them. But, since he was tied tightly, he would not be able to jump off the ship or swim to shore, or to do anything else that might endanger himself or his crew, when he heard the magical music. It worked! Odysseus is still the only man in the world who ever heard the Sirens sing and lived to tell about it! ”
Strap yourselves in, we are in for a bumpy ride.
Nicely done! Am pinching the Iggy Pop line. : )
Welcome, bean-saor, and congratulations on your graduation! The heart knows. 🙂
Good words of advice and comfort Eric and I hope the many readers of this blog who DON’T leave a response will benefit from reading them, as it seems your readers who DO respond are navigating the Zeitgeist quite well. All things considered. The beautiful black swan you have pictured here reminds me of two things: (1) birds and animals sense changes in the air so much better than we mortals, and (2) the ugly ducking always morphs into a beautiful creature like this. If only we could learn to trust our instincts.
With the many possible “big changes” brought on by the sweeping energies of Uranus square Pluto it is remarkable that any of us can feel grounded. Many of the prognosticators assure us that after we get through the calamitous events sure to accompany these squares, a better world for all of us will emerge. Something you said in earlier (but recent) articles about the 28 Gemini degree made me look at the chart for when Uranus entered Aries the 2nd time, on March 11, 2011.
At that moment the south node of the Moon was at 28 Gemini 36. the Uranian Point Hades was also at 28+ Gemini and retrograde. Neptune conjunct Ceres in Aquarius was trine the south node and I wondered if this might mean that whatever it is about that degree that is triggered in devastating events (when occupied by a planet) is meant to be released by us, as suggested by the south node. Since Uranus will be in Aries for the next 7 years and transformation seems inescapable, is it so unreasonable to believe that Neptune and Ceres (and Chiron too) could facilitate that “release” of ugliness, represented by Hades conjunct the south node, during this period of time? The north node of opportunities in the Uranus 2nd ingress-to-Aries chart (conjunct the Galactic Core) suggests to me that if we listen to our higher wiser self that it could happen. The Neptune-Ceres-Chiron conjunction is sextile the north node and the GC, and I don’t need to tell you that in the U.S. Sibly birth chart it (Neptune, et al) is (was) conjunct the Moon and Pallas-Athene. All we need to do is dream up a plan that makes everyone on the Earth feel better. All we need is Love.
be
Hi Sarah,
Thanks, yes the Tao Te Ching is very much to do with “government” and “strategy”, and I suppose that would also include the “government” of the Self. The verse makes a great deal of sense – even when read with the rational mind.
Back to my earlier observation, “if you want to “contain” something, you need to give it [a] space” – otherwise the thing runs “wild” and becomes unpredictable, doesn’t it (ie it is not *contained* [I wish this blog supported italics!])?
He is talking about containing, presumably with the aim of *controlling*. On a personal level, that makes sense, for example with regard to emotions and the “shadow self” (and this would also extend to the governance of a state or nation – we only have to look at the Arab Spring as an example).
If we don’t give our feelings a space to express themselves, they cannot by definition be “contained” (even more literally – to “contain” would require a *container* – which is what else but a place/space to put something), and rather than us owning our feelings, our feelings own us instead – the Shadow Self. Very interesting verse. Thanks for posting it.
Cheers, Indrani.
Greetings all from a newbie!
I would like to say thank you for this site to Eric, Chelsea, Len, Sarah, and all the contributors. The insights and supportive words, the ideas and connections, have all been serendipitous, necessary, and pretty amazing. While I can’t claim to be as adept as many with the minutae of astrology, I have always held it as a remarkable tool, along with tarot, in my life.
“That starts with forming a relationship to whatever this big historical process represents, how it feels to you and what your involvement might be…
I’ve heard from lots of people who know they have some role to play in whatever this new thing is that’s emerging, with varying degrees of vision about how that might look. Others have the palpable feeling that they have a role in shaping the process; that their time has come. ”
It’s taken 53 years to finally reach the work I’ve always known I was called to do; the signs, messages, and incredible coincidences have never let me forget, but it just felt overwhelmingly impossible given the constraints of my life. Yet I have been doing the groundwork, despite the ‘call’ to toe-the-line and conform to the status quo, expending an incredible amount of time and energy going down any road but the one I’ve always been called to travel. But fear is what holds us/me back; I’m too old, it’s unrealistic, I’m only being a silly old lady, etc. I couldn’t care less anymore! I’m walking away from what? Mundanity? No problem! So, thank you for helping me to make the connections quicker; gestation is such a process! I knew the time was approaching, but it feels good to graduate.
I awoke yesterday with ‘someone’ speaking to me, saying “Don’t worry about the problem; you can do it!” I take great inspiration from John Brennan and his actions during a patdown by the TSA. No shame; just honest openness…the song’s almost done. : )
Le gra (with love)
indranibe – I think it’s about putting myself in a state of ‘allowing’. By fighting something, I give it energy, and in that state of fighting nothing really changes even if it seems to. If I align with that place of centre I become, against all beliefs of the ego, powerful.
If I read it with my analytical mind, it feels wrong. Somehow, though, it makes sense to my intuition; it is encompassed. The two lines that embody it for me are these:
“Flexibility and yielding
overcome adamant coerciveness.”
This is the footnote to the verse in my version of the book (The Essential Tao translated by Thomas Cleary):
‘This chapter is highly prized by strategists. Wang Yiqing says, “When you see forced expansion, you know there will be shrinkage, and when you see a display of strength, you know there is weakness.”‘
It is on one level about government strategy, but I don’t read it that way. I see it as the inevitable ebb and flow of everything. Without consciousness and conscious action, one extreme will lead to another because balance will always be sought.
An Invocation for Beginnings
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYlCVwxoL_g&sns=fb
What do you think that means Sarah, the verse from the Tao Te Ching? I think it means that you have to let things run their course, and they will eventually “exhaust” themselves, and thus be “contained”. If you attempt to suppress a thing, it will only eventually burst free. Qed, if you want to “contain” something, you need to give it [a] space. Any thoughts?
Starseed transmissions…I haven’t heard anyone else refer to them before this. I read those back in my 20’s and thought they were profound then; they still are today. Thanks for posting them.
Thank you Eric, a really beautiful gem of an article. Lot’s of love to you my friend.
HS
“We don’t need to align ourselves anymore with the old paradigm, you know, the one that says we need a piece of paper before we can counsel one another, right Carrie? Nope, toss those old patterns of thinking aside and follow your heart, your *big* heart, your gut, your sense of knowing. You have it. You know it. Let it be.”
Thanks, Shebear…I will and with caution.
“question everything that has a strong feeling behind it and to ask provocative questions as my therapist would. When I do this, I create space between the thought and the reaction/emotion and the action, which ultimately forms a healthy feedback loop.”
That’s exactly what I am doing right now so as to be sure before I do anything further. Thanks for putting it into words, Cara. That helps a lot.
“Carrie, what if you don’t get involved, and these two souls you are helping lose their relationship? It’s so so scary! Either way, we have responsibility, to ourselves, to do what we came to do, – counsel, fundraise or peace-make as the case may be – and to the people who have appeared in our lives at this time needing the help we know that we can give.
With great respect, Carrie, may I say don’t worry about the peice of paper that says you are qualified to counsel. Right now our brothers and sisters out there don’t need that qualification to heal. They need your intelligence, your compassion, and your gentle counsel to help them along their path. We all know how a smile from a child or a stranger can turn an ordinary mundane day, into a beautiful joyful one. Imagine what the right words can do to an aching heart! Imagine the balm to both those souls when someone listens because they care whats going on in their lives. The risk is, you may lose a friend, and I may lose a sister, but at least we tried. On some level, they will know someone cared for them, took the trouble to help them, listen to them, heal them, even if they didn’t get the outcome they wanted.”
Thanks, Sina, for the feedback about the social conventions and that paper. I also realize that transiting Chiron is also still within a conjunction to my sun and natal Chiron. Strong desire to help indeed. I am going to err on the side of extreme caution.
I am very thankful for all of you here at PW; you each give me a better view of things which helps me get ckear and move forward.
What a great post, Eric, and what a gift you are to us. Thank *you*. Yes I have been feeling this for a few days now and yes it is the edge of the night but just as it is coming to a close and a beautiful dawn breaks. The dawn of a day so unlike anything we have ever known.
We don’t need to align ourselves anymore with the old paradigm, you know, the one that says we need a piece of paper before we can counsel one another, right Carrie? Nope, toss those old patterns of thinking aside and follow your heart, your *big* heart, your gut, your sense of knowing. You have it. You know it. Let it be.
Spread the love where you can, let it flow into you and back out to everyone and everything and everywhere however briefly or minuscule it seems. Tweak and engineer each and every moment with a hard fought loving confidence. Empty out, fill up and let it flow out again. The dance of infinity.
and the best part is, “to give is priceless……”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_wck_PT_QY
Eric:
Thank you. From the resonant opening quote to the closing, and beautifully articulate, description of a standing wave, thank you for a piece which captures, confesses and coalesces the anaretic solar Aries of 2012. On the edge of night is the dawn, is it not?
Interesting you should mention ‘the band’, Levon Helm’s wife and daughter have announced,
he is “in the final stages of his battle with cancer.”
I love his raspy uplifting song “When I Go Away”.
Just read your post about ‘The Weight’.
One of my favorite songs, there is a message/feeling state below the lyrics,
the feeling of traveling, the energy constantly moving. On the surface, strong pulls of negativity, just below, synchronicity and faith in the unseen, much stronger stronger.
Since Pallas,Chiron and Neptune entered my consciousness I am paying attention to the positive feeds of energy. This is one. Thank you for your beautiful writing.
Wow, you guys, deep stuff. I’m feeling like Sarah, the pull in, having lived my life like you all with the YES and the compulsion to help. What I’m learning is that the pull is not necessarily what it seems to be. The desire to help is one thing, and the compulsion the face of something else entirely. Not that to help is not eventually a goal, not at all. However, without a firm foundation in clarity and intention, we might be acting out our own material on someone else without meaning to, and that in a counseling situation is not usually productive for either party until it’s recognized. The time-out I’ve been giving myself is both to find the core (which I suspect is more an empty place from which all arises) and to question everything that has a strong feeling behind it and to ask provocative questions as my therapist would. When I do this, I create space between the thought and the reaction/emotion and the action, which ultimately forms a healthy feedback loop. I confess the vipassana practice I just started has helped with this also, and the therapy, and the reading, and Huffy/Carrie/Eric/Sarah etc posts here (sorry if I left one of you out…it’s all been immense, really).
In summary, what she said 😉
Viewed from this perspective I can embrace the intent driving a few people at work.
Thx you for this piece
Eric – love, love, love The Starseed Transmissions. What a beautiful, illuminating, gentle yet powerful book!
A lovely quote, nicoise. I find what Osho has to say is often strikingly resonant. I’m reading the Tao Te Ching right now, which is simply another way of aligning with intuition as far as I can see it.
Should You Want To Contain
Should you want to contain something,
you must deliberately let it expand.
Should you want to weaken something,
you must deliberately let it grow strong.
Should you want to eliminate something,
you must deliberately allow it to flourish.
Should you want to take something away,
you must deliberately grant it.
This is called subtle illumination.
Flexibility and yielding
overcome adamant coerciveness.
Fish shouldn’t be taken from the depths;
the effective tools of the nation
shouldn’t be shown to others.
“Don’t seek, don’t search, don’t ask, don’t knock, don’t demand- relax. If you relax, it comes. If you relax, it is there. If you relax, you start vibrating with it.” ✨Osho
The strongest sense that I have right now is to ‘pull ourselves in first’. Let me explain that a little more.
In many people’s lives (mine is no exception) there is a massive call to change; either that, or change is happening whether we like it or not.
What feels critical here is to find a sense of centre within – heaven knows, anything that we have clung to in the past, whether relationships, places, familiar patterns, are doing their own shapeshifting dances around us. And so the only way we are going to move with this effectively, work with it, thrive on it, is to anchor ourselves to something that is unchanging. That is the part of us that is eternal, and we don’t find it by looking ‘out there’.
I think that the only way we can effectively help others is from this place of detachment – when we ourselves are not clinging either, whether to hope, expectation, need, security. That’s not to say that we lack love or compassion – just that when we make a move, we do so from that point at centre because when we do that, we absolutely know when to act, when not to act, what to do, and what not to do. It all becomes very, very clear. Getting there is the tricky part, but it comes down to intuition, every single time, imo.
Hi Eric,
After Monday’s Sun-Saturn opposition, when I had a meltdown at work, and argued with the boss, I realised that I was a “yes” person. The dawning showed that I had pretty much been a “yes” person all my life and although I knew it vaguely in the background, the events of Monday and afterwards confirmed that I now KNOW it. If anyone asks me to do something, help them with something, come to them for something, yes, has always been my answer, without any thought to myself, my family or my husband. Charity work is in my blood too, so I’m always off on some crusade, saving someone from hunger, poverty, loneliness etc thinking that what everyone else wanted was always more important than what we wanted or needed coz we are ok. Why? Why did I spend most of my life thinking that if I could help, that I HAD to? On Taurus New Moon, I travel to visit my family in Australia – sister in 2nd stage of chemo for tumour on her neck whom I haven’t seen in over 8 yrs, and brother whom I haven’t seen in over 5 yrs. This is the “big” thing in my life at the moment – facing the past (family), and hopefully healing it enough to have a future. If there is no future relationship, then at least I tried and know where I stand. I’m so scared – I’ve spent the last two nights crying, but also excited at the thought of reuniting my family again, because that potential is also there.
Carrie, I hear you – What if I mess things up for them by being involved?
But what if I don’t get involved? I lose the chance to reunite my family, and the possiblity of a happy future for us siblings and our children.
Carrie, what if you don’t get involved, and these two souls you are helping lose their relationship? It’s so so scary! Either way, we have responsibility, to ourselves, to do what we came to do, – counsel, fundraise or peace-make as the case may be – and to the people who have appeared in our lives at this time needing the help we know that we can give.
With great respect, Carrie, may I say don’t worry about the peice of paper that says you are qualified to counsel. Right now our brothers and sisters out there don’t need that qualification to heal. They need your intelligence, your compassion, and your gentle counsel to help them along their path. We all know how a smile from a child or a stranger can turn an ordinary mundane day, into a beautiful joyful one. Imagine what the right words can do to an aching heart! Imagine the balm to both those souls when someone listens because they care whats going on in their lives. The risk is, you may lose a friend, and I may lose a sister, but at least we tried. On some level, they will know someone cared for them, took the trouble to help them, listen to them, heal them, even if they didn’t get the outcome they wanted.
I’m going to my family with no expectations but to be love, to give love and reiki to my sick sister, to give love and support to my brother, and to heal my relationship with my beautiful Mum, once and for all. This is the time to step into what we truly came here to do, without fear or expectation. We can FEEL it!
In love and light (and a few scaredy cat tears)
Sina
Oh that’s why. Transiting Neptune is approaching my natal sun. Good reason not to trust these feelings right now.
“Many people are going from the experience of having no involvement whatsoever to a sudden confrontation with wanting or needing to be involved, yet devoid of all preconceptions of how that might look. I’ve heard from lots of people who know they have some role to play in whatever this new thing is that’s emerging, with varying degrees of vision about how that might look. Others have the palpable feeling that they have a role in shaping the process; that their time has come.” …..snip…..
“The way that you get drawn into the pattern is specifically by fear, which is a way of saying that this force can only work its dark wonders if it taps into something already resident in you. It doesn’t work to suppress the fear, or to let it throw you around; what often does work is to establish a relationship with it, as a first step. Then to one degree or another, you can make contact with what I will call the Healing Force.”
Oh Eric, this is exactly what I am dealing with right now. This past couple of weeks I have realized that my gift of helping people (sort of like a cross between counseling and coaching a la Tony Robbins style) has been revving up like crazy. I am beginning to think this is my second career that the Gemini on my 10th house talks about (my first being that of a full time mother).
It started when I met a woman who is suffering in her marriage. I met her online when she inquired about Flagstaff and now in real life because she moved here. I met her husband too and I feel a connection to them both for some reason. Then she began telling me more about her fears and her problems with her marriage and I could SEE what was happening. I don’t know how but I can. Yet I am afraid; I am not a couselor, I have no formal training in that nor do I feel qualified to help. Even so, I have started helping her.
I want to help him too but I am afraid because social convention (and her confidence; I don’t know if she has told him that she talks to me about their problems so I cannot divulge that) means I cannot speak to him.
I feel their pain and it is so frustrating because I doubt myself and my ability to help. What if my perceptions are wrong? What if I am projecting? After last year’s fiasco with my crazy menopausal hormones and unusual projections (which cost me in ways I still deeply feel) I am wary of both my feelings and my perceptions. What if I mess things up for them by even getting involved? Why do I feel this intense desire to help them? I only just met them last year.
So here I am; feeling that very same compulsion you are talking about but also feeling the fear of self-doubt and of social conventions and restrictions placed on me.
How do I know I am on the right track? This FEELS so intense now and so I worry that it may be deceiving. These people are suffering; I am afraid of either causing more harm or of losing her friendship.