At every seasonal shift we're encouraged to pause and review what has been, as we reinvigorate our intentions for the months ahead. What seeds did you plant in spring? What fruits did you cultivate in summer? What is the bounty you're now harvesting? What do you intend to hibernate with this winter? None of us are the same person we were a year ago. Even last week feels like it was a lifetime ago. This accelerated feeling, this sense of quickening that's happening for everyone, was forecast by several ancient civilizations.
If the Mayans, the Aztecs, the Native Americans and other wise cultures with were right, time is accelerating us into something. What...? Is it the end of the world (i.e. human consciousness) as we know it? Is it the return of the White Buffalo Calf Woman and the restoration of balance in an imbalanced world? Whatever will be will be and one thing is certain... this time in human evolution is deeply transformational. With a penchant for navigating the planetary influences on our collective narrative, I offer the major aspect to be aware of in the fall season...
On October 5, Saturn, the planet that rules order, structure and discipline completes a three year journey through the sign of Libra. This transit revealed to us the balance we're capable of generating when we relate with ourselves, with our loved ones and with the world in ways authentic to your true nature. The flip side of that coin revealed to us the imbalances we create when we lie or perpetuate outdated patterns and inauthentic forms of expression. I know I'm not the only one who had to look in the mirror of my unconscious projections (and the painful karmas they created as well as completed). This was of course for a purpose...
To take stock and remember the value of being true to who and what you are. If you persist with the lies and justifications as Saturn moves into Scorpio, the sign of transformation, death and rebirth, you won't be able to escape Saturn's (the lord of karma) sword of truth that cuts off the head of ignorance and false personalities. Nothing that is born can escape death. Make no mistake, I'm not talking about a literal death. I'm talking about the death of ego-identification. Which, for many of us, will feel a lot like dying. Because, as these identifications with the ego die within us, so too the structures that were designed by them must also die. Those of us who pursued a career, relationships, acquisitions or financial status in the world, we will have to take a long look in the mirror and ask this simple question: Is this a product of my truth or ego aggrandizement?
When the Sun passes over Saturn in Scorpio on October 25, and the heat generated by the transformational solar waves turns up, our fear of death - figurative in the form of ego-identification and literal to life in this body - will be primed for reconciliation. What lives on the other side is liberation. For those of us who genuinely fear death (in all its forms), please consider the following discourse from Alan Watts...
"When you die, you're not going to have to put up with everlasting non-existence because that's not an experience. A lot of people are afraid that when they die they're going to be locked up in a dark room forever, and sort of undergo that. But one of the most interesting things in the world... this is a yoga, a way of realization... is to try and imagine what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up. Think about that. Children think about it. It's one of the great wonders of life. What will it be like to go to sleep and never wake up? And if you think long enough about that something will happen to you. You will find out, among other things, that it will post the next question to you: What was it like to wake up after never having gone to sleep? That was when you were born. You see, you can't have an experience of nothing. Nature abhors a vacuum. So after you're dead the only thing that can happen is the same experience, or the same sort of experience, as when you were born.
From a strictly physical, scientific standpoint this organism is a continuous energy with everything else that's going on. And if I am my foot, I am the sun. Only we've got this little partial view, we've got the idea that I'm just something in this body. The ego. That's a joke. The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention. It's like a radar on a ship. The radar on a ship is a trouble shooter; 'is there anything in the way?' And conscious attention is a designed function of the brain to scan the environment, like a radar does, and note for any trouble making changes. And if you identify yourself with your trouble shooter, then naturally you define yourself as being in a perpetual state of anxiety. And the moment we cease to identify with the ego, and become aware that we are the whole organism, you realize how harmonious it all is. Because your organism is a miracle of harmony. All these things functioning together... even those corpuscles and creatures that are fighting each other in the blood stream and eating each other up. If they weren't doing that, you wouldn't be healthy. So what is discord at one level of your being is harmony at a higher level. And when you realize that, you begin to be aware too that the discords of your life and the discords of people's lives, which are a fight at one level, at a higher level of the universe are healthy and harmonious. And you suddenly realize that everything that you are and do, is, at that level, as magnificent and as free of any blemish as the patterns and waves, the markings and model, the way a cat moves. And that this world is really okay and can't be anything else otherwise it couldn't exist. But the reality underneath physical existence, or which really is physical existence because in my philosophy there's no difference between physical and spiritual. These are absolutely out of date categories. It's all a process. It isn't stuff on the one hand and form on the other. It is pattern. Life is pattern. It is a dance of energy." ~ Alan Watts
I don't claim to know what's in store for the dance of energy that is this world, but I do perceive through the lens of astrology an awakening of significant proportion to be available to those willing to do the work. There appears to me to be an opportunity to be reborn anew. Like never before I can transform my perception of who I am, from the personality I conditioned myself to believe I am and all the emotions that go with it, into the I... the I that I was before my parents were born... the sacred I AM beyond the endless ego-identifications that arise in this world of duality.
In western astrology the layers of personality are represented by the moon, the sun and the ascendant (or rising sign). According to the workbook Astrology For Yourself, the Moon refers to your past and represents the innermost core of your being, your private feelings and subconscious habits and attitudes. The Sun refers to your present and represents who you know yourself to be, your conscious purpose and identity. The ascendant refers to your future and represents your mask or persona that colors how you present yourself to the world at large.
To know how these aspects influence how you've been in the past, what you're influenced by in the present and where you can optimally be in service to this world moving forward, greatly informs exactly how and why you will benefit from dying a conscious death to all your ego-identifications.
In my eyes, there is nothing more important we can do for the healing of our planet and the generations to come than Wake Up to the lies we tell ourselves and each other, and Remember Our True Nature. Luminaries and sages both past and present have predicted mankind will perish if we fail to wake up in time. With the ecological state of the world, many fear it may be too late. Yet, here we are. My only question, both to myself and to you, is this....
What are you going to do about it?
If you choose to ignore the question, or forgo implementing the changes you feel in your gut to be necessary, Saturn will hold no punches as its transit through Scorpio dismantles your attachments to these outdated identifications... whether you like it or not. If you do choose to get out in front of this wave, and allow your intuition to guide you where you need to be, Saturn's energy will instead be available to support the restructuring of the world you (we) consciously create. Remember, the choice is (y)ours.
In gratitude to all for your contribution to our collective awakening.
Stellar blessings,
Ryan
www.bodyworkastrology.com
For those who want to ride the waves of transformation available during the upcoming winter solstice (also the end of the 13th Baktun of the Mayan Calendar) at the Mayan ruins throughout the jungles of Belize, a few spots remain for our transformational retreat, happening December 17-24, 2012.
Please visit MAYANTENTION for more information, or send me an Email.
Namaste
