As we move through this season of surrender, the time of year of Pisces/Neptune (see last KM post) it may be helpful to remind ourselves that this period is essentially about completion. Surrender, letting go, relinquishing what no longer serves are requisite to completion. A whole new cycle, the new year, is about to begin, making this time the most perfect one in which to clear the decks, let go of the old and free ourselves from patterns of self-sabotage or simply self-clutter. The surrender Neptune evokes and provokes is ultimately a supportive, growth-enhancing process. We cannot begin a new cycle in the best way possible if we are burdened by old habits of mind body and spirit.
Now, in Pisces season, we are perfectly placed to actively seek out these habits and resolve to surrender them into the ethers, clearing our field and strengthening it with new resolve – ready for the Sun’s passage into Aries on March 20.
This Sunday, March 10, sees the New Moon of this season. Sun and Moon are together in Pisces, doubling the energy, underscoring the message. New Moons are perfect times to reflect on intentions and resolutions for the coming cycle. Never more so powerfully as the Pisces New Moon – the last in the zodiacal cycle; the culmination of the entire year just gone. Aries is the true beginning of the year and if we are living in tune with the cosmos and the Kosmos (the harmonic, conscious cosmos) then we are advised by the Oracle to be ready. And so these last couple of weeks of the season of surrender ought not be wasted.
We can all reflect on aspects of our character that we know or suspect may not be serving us.
Perhaps a daily habit, something our bodies probably could do better without, or perhaps a habit of mind, a tendency to replay old tapes of stories, justifications, judgments, rationalisations, that, in all honesty, we know are keeping our vibratory energy sub-optimal. We might even have ‘positive’ stories about ourselves that on the face of it appear harmless. And yet, the hidden philosophy informs us – ultimately we have to let go of all our self-images. The awakening the Tantra philosophy illuminates as possible and worth striving for requires us to let go of everything we think we are. Positive characteristics as well as negative ones. Tantra scholar and author Christopher Wallis, in his book Tantra Illuminated, reminds us: “The state of all-encompassing fullness and wholeness that is the goal of the path – your already existent ultimate nature – is by definition one in which you experience that the pattern of the whole of reality exists within you and that your identity is not defined by one part more than by any other. In other words, to experience identity with the all-encompassing Absolute, you must necessarily relinquish identification with some limited aspect or fragment of it – that aspect you habitually call ‘me’. It is your clinging to your limited identity that is precisely what prevents you from experiencing the Whole within yourself.” We are told that this letting go does not mean abandoning our responsibilities in life (those roles we ‘identity’ with). Rather, the liberation the Tantrika speaks of is “…..going from the experience of being trapped in your life situation to the experience of continuously perceiving that you are the infinite creative Light of divine Presence, joyously playing the ROLE of a wife, mother, doctor, farmer, etc…..”
Lofty. And perfect – for this time. Okay, it may feel like a bit of an ask to ‘let go of your identity’ right now. But what we can do is reflect on this idea: the possibility of letting go of our limited idea of ourselves. Our identification with who we think we are can be a major obstacle on the road to our peaceful heart, our liberation. If you know where Saturn is and what he is doing in your birth chart, for example, you have a powerful clue as to your own unique obstacle. The next step is to realize that we do not need to identify with this ‘block’. It is not who we are, in truth. Our fears and anxieties (indicated by Saturn) are not who we are. If we think they are we are limiting our idea of ourselves. Rather, our obstacles, our fears, are messengers pointing us to an area of vulnerability in our psychic make-up, one that ultimately has the potential to be transformed to our greatest mastery. On the other hand, we might identify more readily with our greatest strengths and talents – observing them, if we are honest with ourselves, we will see the involvement of our ego. Recall, we are to let go of our positive, as well as our negative characteristics. To be really in harmony with the season, the Kosmic medicine is urging us now to reflect on all that no longer serves us – the good the bad and the ugly. And then, to surrender it up to the gods.
“If we live in agreement with nature, our lives will flow smoothly.” (Zeno, founder of Stoicism)
We are part of nature. It makes sense that if we live in attunement with nature, we will flow with where nature, life, is taking us. The element of this season is water. Water is the most mysterious element. It is a carrier of consciousness, a holder of memory, a dissolver of structures and forms of substance. Water always tries to flow into a spiral pattern, the primal pattern of our universe. Unimpeded it always flows this way. What does that tell us? I will hazard a guess. Water flows into spirals because the spiral encompasses and transcends - and this is the pure and primary expression of life. The spiral’s circular motion encompasses the field of the second and third dimensions and its expansion above and beyond the circumference of the circle transcends to higher and higher dimensions, ad infinitum. Encompassing and transcending is the way of nature. We are in nature, we are thus designed to encompass – all that we know and experience and to transcend – to go beyond all we and know and experience, in order to know and experience higher and higher levels of consciousness. This journey of consciousness is the way of nature and if we want to live in the flow of nature and of life itself, we too must encompass and transcend.
And so, in this season of surrender, as I have been calling it, where the Kosmic message is – let go! - clear out the clutter in preparation for the new year about to begin, if we are to be truly in the flow we can do no better than accept this task: encompass all you have come to know, all you have experienced up until this point in our life. That is to say, integrate it all. Digest the experiences. That means don’t distract, deny or avoid them (Pisces loves to escape), but rather feel them. And then transcend all of it. Neptune is charged, above all, with this aspect of consciousness – transcendence, or going beyond the mundane, the painful, the trivial, the shame, the hurt, the regret, the sadness, and the pride, the vanity. All of it. Let go, surrender it all. If we can relinquish it all, we transcend our present condition. And from this place, this higher perspective, we are perfectly placed to start afresh, uncluttered, free of the burdens of the past, ready for the next turn of the spiral – preparing to take us above and beyond this point in space and time.
My friends, take advantage of the season; remember the New Moon on Sunday the 10th – my birthday as it happens – a doubly potent day if you have personal planets around 19-20 degrees of Pisces – and think about setting yourself free. This is truly living in agreement with nature, a philosophy the Stoics knew to be a valuable one. Freedom is recognizing that ALL IS FLOW……
The essence of the Tao.
Offered in the Spirit of Love – the web in which we are all connected – and Freedom.
See you in the New Year.