Emptiness is my breath
02.24.2022: Waking up to the news of war this morning…
Sentient beings are unable to enter the true way because thelr minds are untamed
Commentary: What is “an untamed mind”? In Chinese, the word ‘untamed’ is made up of two components: “forgetting” and “woman.” An untamed mind is one that “forgets the woman or the female.”
The mind belongs to the li position of the pa-k’ua, The trigram (=) represents fire and sun. The sun is the ruler of the mind (or heart). The female is the symbol of queenliness. She is just and incorruptible. Her light shines on the world and gives life to all. Forgetting the female therefore means forgetting the true nature that is in us.
-Cultivating Stillness, a Taoist manual for transforming body and mind. Eva Wong, Shambala, 1992
Waking up to the news of war this morning brings up these seemingly disconnected thoughts and feelings, a sense of separation, and it feels important to consider the untamed mind, the forgetting of intuition, of being in the mind and disregarding the inner world…
Last night I finished watching the first episode of Changing of the Gods*. A year ago I attended an online event with R. Tarnas, and to be honest, I still feel the instinct in my body that reacts negatively to his approach, that I don’t resonate with his work, how it has been taken as a fixed idea — as if events happen outside of ourselves! During that talk, I asked him to elaborate on the potential each individual has to align with their own power and become conscious of their shadow and potential for synthesis using the language of the natal chart. His response was to show a lot of diagrams and studies, yet he gave me no direct answer about individual potential. There’s a gift here, something I can learn about in myself through my reaction, a way I can turn into the shadow. I will watch the rest of the series, “hoping” I will change my mind… or not…
Students of Evolutionary Astrology learn that part of the paradigm is the trinity — understanding that it is not just an array of signs, planets, and houses with their polarities, but a synthesis, an integration that relies on individual experience and perspective, that is the full potential. Astrology is a living form. It is alive in each one of us, it is not fated, static, or fixed; it is evolving, and as consciousness expands, we keep expanding and resonating as singular beings.
It is the observation and correlation of the archetypes, the symbols we relate to that speak to parts of our psyche, of our dream/unconscious world that may or may not make sense to us, but which have meaning once explored. C. G. Jung himself asked not to be fixed with these tools, but to use them to enter the journey of self-inquiry, self-discovery, to look into the shadows where to shine the light.
Words and concepts become fixed when one devoids them of experience, staying only with the definitions and someone else’s knowledge. True being requires stripping the mind and opening the heart to the experience of being alive, which includes the shadow. Looking into what is painful, fearsome, or frustrating in our lives, these are all potentials that can lead to the threshold and the liminal state of awakening from the fixed, conditioned structure that is heavy with guilt and shame.
My Uranus-Pluto balsamic conjunction (1964) (7th-8th houses) opposing, Saturn and Chiron, has asked me to discern and to break free from any relationship that can be considered co-dependent, limiting my freedom to be sovereign, and to create clear boundaries, being wary of any victimization energy that still abounds in the collective. I’m invited to be mindful of how I relate to things, situations, or beings (7th house-Libra- Venus function.)
Emptiness is my feedback– no more projecting and expecting, just being– emptiness as in the Zen, Taoist way, the sum of all things, the now moment. The present moment, how I perceive it and stay aware of it, will always allow me to break free from the slavery of giving my power away.
Where is your Pluto- Uranus and how do you relate to transformation and breaking free from conditioning?
What are you feeling these days that can make you feel more empowered?
What aspects are you challenging because your experience says otherwise?
Where are you sovereign, my friend?
It can feel lonely, yet emptiness is my breath. I’ll remain attentive to how I feel tonight and every night as the series unfolds. Hey! I may change my point of view, for I have an emotional body that is passionate and I have learned time and again to come back to the same feelings and feel them from a different perspective, even at times accepting I was wrong about my views and perceptions…
“Integrated history is presence, unintegrated history is the past”
— Thomas Hübl
Today as I read the news, I felt echoes of my personal trauma, of the echo that speaks of a divisive nature, having been born in Colombia where violence and division is so present. During a meditation today, I reconnected to the urge I feel about regulating my body so the echo is not out there looking for blame, but acknowledging and embracing my own divisiveness from within.
My question at a collective level — if I integrate this shadow, understanding this divisiveness within myself, will that translate to me echoing less divisiveness in my surroundings?
Changing of the Gods* Is there a connection between the radical shift in human behavior today and the movement of our planets?
In the last decade, we’ve seen revolutionary human behavior that’s transforming our world and bringing about liberation, freedom, and justice. And when we look back through history at similar events… a pattern starts to emerge.
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