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| Artwork by JH Williams III |
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Sweet Surrender
Forecast for February 2012
And I don't know what the future is holdin' in store
I don't know where I'm goin', I'm not sure where I've been
There's a spirit that guides me, a light that shines for me
My life is worth the livin', I don't need to see the end
Sweet, sweet surrender
Live, live without care
Like a fish in the water
Like a bird in the air
~ John Denver, "Sweet Surrender"
Life or death?
I've been referring to the current retrograde cycle of Mars in Virgo as "the warrior visiting the temple priestess." This can sound helpful particularly if we are in need of some space and time to reconnect to our roots and essence, to purify in order to refine and shift the priorities of our inner hero/warrior.
But there's another way of thinking of this time, and it might be more in line with what you're experiencing: our warrior has been badly wounded and is now at the mercy of the triage nurse. This is yet another aspect of our Virgo archetype, which seeks to make order out of chaos. As the triage nurse, she makes the hard decisions about what is worth saving and what is too badly damaged to survive. In her world, it can feel like "life or death" every second.
When resources are scarce (especially the resource of time) we too might have to make hard and fast decisions about the best use of our energy. From the bird's eye view, we may have everything we need. But in the trenches of day-to-day living, we may feel like we're scrambling to cobble together a life amidst all the demands we put upon us.
Perhaps you are currently too wounded to even know what your priorities should be. If you're feeling like everything is just too dire, maybe you need a nurse to stop the bleeding, bandage you up, and give you time to heal.
A lot of folks are really hurting right now. Maybe you're one of them. The demands of this time are immense, but our pain is actually a sign of our shared strength. The sensation of pain is a signal that something needs attention. The fact that we feel pain means that the body is working – it is giving us information so that we can make adjustments to our current state. I'm not just talking about physical pain, but emotional, spiritual, intellectual pain as well.
On a larger scale, feeling overwhelmed, fearful, or distraught for ourselves, others or the whole world is a sign that our larger global body is working. When we feel pain or joy on any level, it is an opportunity to tune in. Tuning in, we discover information that is vital to our health and to our destiny. Instead of blocking our feelings or letting them hold us hostage, we can, as astrologer David Pond instructs, "Feel it. Bless it. Let it go."
So if you need the triage nurse right now, see if you can identify one or two wounds that would benefit from some immediate care. Take a cue from your own body in this. If you are experiencing physical pain, could it be trying to alert you to a wider systemic problem – an emotional, spiritual, intellectual imbalance as well? If your emotions are rising up in all kinds of ways, can you simply feel it, bless it, and let it go?
I'm an Immateria Girl
“The only reality we can ever truly know is that of our perceptions, our own consciousness, while that consciousness, and thus our entire reality, is made of nothing but signs and symbols. Nothing but language. Even God requires language before conceiving the Universe. See Genesis: In the beginning was the Word.” ~ Alan Moore, Promethea, Vol. 5
Hot on the heels of the Full Moon in Leo, Venus joins Uranus in the sign of Aries. As I was meditating on the nature of this configuration, the great superheroine Promethea showed up. Promethea is the central character in a series of comic books written by Alan Moore.
As the story goes, Promethea lives in the "Immateria," the realm of imagination where anything is possible, and comes into physical form as a powerful warrior whenever someone conjures her up with a work of literature, from poetry to novels to comics. The story of Promethea could connect us to both the Venus-Uranus conjunction in the short term (exact on April 9) as well as Neptune in Pisces over the long haul.
This month, we are connecting with our Inner-Feminine in order to understand our unique genius. As Jungian Robert Johnson writes, "Genius…is [our] interior feminine capacity to give birth; and [our] masculinity gives us the capacity for putting that creativity into form and structure in the outer world."
From the formless feminine (the Immateria) we connect with our very own genius. How do we connect with this part of us? By not doing anything for a while, by dreaming, spacing out, writing poems, listening to music – by feeding the soul part of us which is not concerned with productivity, only reverie, sensation, and imagination.
This leads us into the Neptune in Pisces realm, where vision, illusion, fantasy, and dreams meet up. We will be under the influence of this transit for 14 years, and it compels us to be mindful of how we "numb out." We are a culture raised on getting numb, so this lesson will be especially crucial for us so that we can instead tune into Spirit or our Inner Compass for guidance.
I don't know about you, but I'm already feeling pretty confused, my inner compass is all out of whack, and the old tools for coping aren't working for me anymore. "I don't know" and "Huh?" have become familiar phrases. If this year does hold the end of the world, then I am not prepared.
Now here's the punch line: Being unprepared, and by that I mean not having rigid expectations, is exactly how to prepare for whatever 2012 may hold. Opening, softening, dreaming. Let imagination, symbol and myth be a vital news source. We prepare by going within and tuning in to our rich, inner landscapes. We prepare by doing practices that connect us with each other, imagining that we are all extravagantly wise cells in the living body of the Earth. We prepare by cultivating an ethic of stillness, waiting for the right moment to engage rather than acting for the sake of acting.
Y'all think I'm joking, or that I just can't think of anything else to write other than "Slow down. Look within. Connect with your Core-Self." But I'm for reals. The signs on the road all say it's time to meander rather than sprint. Now this occurs while simultaneously we are experiencing a great acceleration and shifting of time, so our work is cut out for us.
If you need more proof of the "slow down" theme, our trusty planet Saturn stations retrograde just before the Full Moon until late June. This is his last tango in Libra, before heading out to Scorpio territory in October.
Astrologer Robert hand writes about Saturn, "If it's not working for you, it's not true for you." So take this retrograde time to see what is true for you. Our compasses are shifting a bit. What used to be North may now look like South. In your relationships, in your work, in your family dynamics, in the art and craft of living – what just isn't working? It might be time to gravitate toward a new core. And you're the only one who can decide what kind of core works best for you.
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