As I sat down to write today, I had a flash of being a little girl, curled up in a big chair eating an apple while disappearing into a book. Something about that memory corresponded to opening my laptop. The common denominators are comfort, coziness, sustenance, and escape I guess.
We all want to escape right now. Our world gets more frightening every day. I heard an estimate yesterday that half our population will come down with the Coronavirus – that’s over 150 million people. Now we’re not all going to die. The vast majority will suffer and recover. We will be inconvenienced. Our lives disrupted. It doesn’t help that investors are panicking and trying to grab all the cash they can; or that citizens are emptying the shelves of goods leaving their neighbors without.
Our lives are going to change for a while, and that’s a good thing. My sister Laura had an innovative thought. She told me the world needs a time-out. That is so true! I think it also needs to take stock. It could use a thorough cleansing. We have been pretty battered by reality for a couple of decades now. We need to purge and heal.
Having recently suffered myself from a vicious form of flu, I feel ravaged on the one hand, and purified on the other. My inner world has been emptied of toxins, my mind of thoughts; my emotional body is wrung out and fluttering in the wind. What a complex explosion of feelings I have experienced in the past two months! Everything from frustration, disillusionment, rage and terror to hopelessness and depression. I’m not sure how I feel right now – numbed, I guess. I keep looking for that glimmer of hope.
We’re crossing a mine field now, but we have guidance. We’re navigating the territory of Capricorn whose king is Saturn, the maker of structures and institutions. Since 2008 Pluto has been unleashing the forces of destruction in this sign. It looks pretty terrifying, but his purpose is to prepare the way for transformation. He exposes weaknesses, dysfunctions, corruption in our institutions, in our collective psyche. He is Lord of the Underworld and as a humanity we must journey into his depths to behold the truth. Ultimately it will set us free to create the kind of world we really want, but first we must face our shadow, and conquer our fear.
Fear will weaken our immune systems, activate our adrenals, make us defensive and stupid. Fear choices are rarely good choices. I’m not saying ignore your instinct. We need to take care of ourselves, but remember our humanity at the same time. We are all going through this together. We can exercise compassion.
I wish I could say that all will be well soon. This passage will take the whole year. We have a long way to go, but that glimmer of hope on the horizon is the Winter Solstice, when the Sun stands still and the light begins to return. On this day, Jupiter will conjunct Saturn and a new cycle of social and political growth will begin. And even more significant, this takes place at zero degrees of Aquarius. After 200 years of Jupiter/Saturn conjunctions in Earth signs, they are moving into Air signs. A New Age is about to be born. A new paradigm will develop, a new awareness will grow. We will see ourselves and each other in a new light. We will begin to rebuild over the ruins of the past.
If we keep our eyes fixed on that horizon, and keep faith with ourselves, it will strengthen us through this collective Dark Night of the Soul. Resistance is futile. It only weakens us and cannot prevent what is to come. We must find a way to be comfortable with uncertainty. Jupiter and Mars are approaching Pluto. Remember that Jupiter makes everything bigger. Mars activates. Mars will conjunct Jupiter on the Spring Equinox less than 2 degrees away from Pluto. Things are heating up.
Twenty three years ago in 1977, a brilliant chemist named Ilia Prigogine, won the Nobel Prize for his theory of dissipative structures. In essence he discovered that as one adds energy to a system, its structure becomes more solidified; but when the energy overwhelms the system, the structure dissipates, replaced by a more viable structure that can accommodate the energy. Imagine that you are observing a grid under a microscope. When heat, for instance, is increased the structure remains a grid but gets bigger and bigger. More space opens up within it. At a critical point the grid bursts into spirals. That’s transformation at the microscopic level of chemical interactions.
We are undergoing that very process psychosocially and spiritually. Energy is increasing from a concentration of pressure. The structure will fail at its weakest points. This process is indicated by a concentration of planets in the sign of Capricorn putting pressure on our system. At some point there will be transformation. As things break down and we loosen our grip on the past, our consciousness will be free to expand, to open to new possibilities. Jupiter will bring more pressure but he will also bolster our faith.
So hang in there. Dig down deeper where your strength, your faith and resilience wait to be summoned. Pay attention to the miracle of transformation within yourself. And fear not! Try to remember that we all signed up for this. This very moment in time is why we chose to be here. It is a privilege and an honor to be creating humanity’s new myth.
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