Today is Friday, July 1, 2011. Just after 4:53 am EDT there is a partial solar eclipse at 10 Cancer. It’s the third and final eclipse of the current cycle and the first eclipse of a brand-new Saros cycle, as Len and Eric have written about recently. The Sabian symbol for this degree is, “A large diamond in the first stages of the cutting process,” and is strikingly apropos.
Planet Waves has been discussing different aspects of letting our new/true selves emerge for the last month, and here we have an eclipse that embodies the paradox we’re all working through: we are already here, have been moving along our own process of awakening with the last two eclipses, yet the advent of a new Saros series of eclipses puts us at a special point of newness and revelation. We have been gems for our entire lifetimes, but we are just beginning to reveal ourselves to ourselves and to the world.
The chipping away with hammer and chisel takes skill and patience; you may feel untrained in the art and are looking for worthy teachers. Remember that as both the gem and the gem-cutter, you can afford to be gentle with yourself as you chip and grind and polish away the layers that are not valuable or useful, and which mask your true brilliance.
We’re in a process of becoming fully present and engaged in this current existence, but it requires a willingness to lose what has held us securely in place — and is actually in the way. The process asks us to have faith in the act of cutting, in our training and in our intuition. As the gem, we can’t know our ideal shape yet; as the gem-cutter, we have to simultaneously see the reality of our rough state while noticing the hints and signs of the inner structure; we’re asked to see ‘what is’ and envision potential in a unified gaze.