“My fellow citizens, we have come now to a time of testing. We must not fail. Let us close the springs of racial poison. Let us pray for wise and understanding hearts. Let us lay aside irrelevant differences and make our nation whole.”
— President Lyndon B. Johnson, upon signing the Civil Rights Act
One week ago today, George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis by a brutal policeman who crushed the life out of him. What a metaphor for what we are doing to people of color in this world! Four hundred years of racism have come to a head. This is the choice of the moment. Are we willing to end this once and for all?
Our phony-baloney patriotic memes are under assault – “liberty and justice for all,” “all men created equal,” “land of the free,” “home of the brave.” Are we going to demand these precious values or are we going to let our government sweep them under the carpet along with everything else they want out of sight?
For the last five days people have come forth in protest. Young and older, male and female, white, black and brown. Our youth recognize the significance of this moment. They are gravitating to the protest sites because they feel they must make a stand. Not to join a rowdy riot, but to walk their talk.
The usual ego dramas are unfolding. Some are beating their chests. Some have lost control of their rage. Some are swept up in the energy. Everyone’s looking to assign blame. Our president promotes force against his people. Amazingly on Saturday, instead of raising their batons and shooting rubber pellets or tear gas into the crowds, many police officers laid down their weapons and joined the march. Many held banners of solidarity. Most were wearing masks. A whole precinct in Miami knelt on the steps of their station demonstrating their solidarity with protestors. What a beautiful thing to do! That’s a paradigm shifter! Instead of resisting, attacking, blaming, judging and punishing, we join the side of truth and justice and actual equality. This is what is right. It is the law of the land.
This is the true dream of America – freedom and justice for all. But we let those in power weaken us by reinforcing our differences. They separate us and turn us on each other. We squabble and kill each other while they count their coin and wield their power. And we fall for it!
Many of us are outraged, as we all should be. This society is an outrage and not to be tolerated a minute longer. I know racism is the main issue of these egoic times. It manifests in the scapegoating of dark-skinned people, but also the poor, the elderly, the working class and women. Children are starving to death in America! Over half a million of our people are homeless! In fact 99.9% of our world-wide society is considered a minority. It has nothing to do with numbers. It is calculated in terms of power, which is now concentrated in the top .1%. That’s the state of our world and we put up with it. Why?
First of all because we have a dream. The Grand Old American Dream! It’s the perfect drug. It keeps us numbed to our reality. It keeps us running on that treadmill because it promises that if we work hard enough, if we toe the line, if we pray to God and at least pretend to keep his commandments, then we shall be rewarded with riches.
So we labor and wealth trickles down, drop by drop, but the demands of our consumer society drain it all back. So we run faster, work harder, improve ourselves even more. We’re constantly trying to make ourselves in the image of success. But where does that image come from? Our media. Not just advertising. We have constant input to distract us from what is true. We are numbed by entertainment. Don’t get me wrong – I love it as much as anyone else. It’s magical. But it’s those shadows flickering on the walls of our caves that we have come to believe in. We watch imaginary life, make judgments about it, make choices and decisions about who to be or not be. We are being sold a paradigm which is burned into our psyches minute by minute through our phones, our computers and televisions. Our entire reality is a projection of our collective belief.
Why haven’t we wised up? Because our dream has been usurped by the ego. Our true selves who desire to live in peace, who want to love and play and create wonders, are drowned out by the shouts of our ego world. Our egos drive us from behind as our power structures suppress from above. We are squeezed between two forces, and we keep focusing on that external force – be it our government, our military, our police – all those authority figures who keep us in line. But we can disempower all of that by focusing on the force that drives from within. This is where our power lies. We can reclaim that power! Instead of turning it over to the ego, we can turn it over to our True Selves.
How do we get in touch with our True Selves? We take some time to be. We are so out of balance, leading with our heads, booking every moment with activity, trying to live up to the standards of an insane society. Hopefully enough of us were able to reconnect with ourselves during the quarantine. Our essential selves, the ones still connected to Source, are not far away. Not out in the future, not “some day” when we improve ourselves enough to deserve them. The Essential Self of every one of us is here, right now. We just need to stop and listen. Bring our presence to it. Open up and make ourselves available to it.
We all need private time, quiet, reflective time. We need to consult our hearts, rediscover its truth and begin to live it. We need to cultivate the wisdom of the heart and that is what Venus is offering us now. In two days she will conjunct the Sun. If we allow it, the dross of the past can be consumed in the solar fire and like the phoenix, we can rise out of our past ego-dominated consciousness into the full presence of our True Selves.
Nodal Whispers
I am compelled to point out the many symbols and synchronicities of this pregnant moment. I mentioned Venus, making her descent in the night sky, her death by fire at the conjunction, and rebirth into the morning sky a few days later. This holy initiation is reflected in mythology. The descent of Inanna is one example. Her rite of passage through the Underworld strips her of all past entanglements. She leaves her former self, and all its trappings, behind and enters psychic depths for purification. This spiritual cleansing is available to all.
I have also been marveling at the Nodal symbolism. On May 5th the nodes of the Moon shifted from the Cancer-Capricorn axis to the Gemini-Sagittarius axis. On Saturday I witnessed the embodiment of these power points. On the one hand, the news was alive with video images of fires and violence and on the other, we launched a manned rocket from American soil for the first time since 2011. I laughed when I heard Bryan Williams say he had two stories which had nothing to do with each other. They are connected on a nodal axis.
The South Node of the Moon which is about unfinished business, unresolved karma, is in Sagittarius – a fire sign concerned with justice among other things. And here was one of the Twin Cities, a reflection of the Gemini Twins, in flames: justice on fire. An interesting note: the exact same nodes were activated in the mid-sixties birthing a social rebellion and the civil rights movement. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act on July 2nd 1964 while the North Node was in Gemini and the South in Sagittarius, just like now. Obviously we have more work to do on this issue.
The North Node is in Gemini, an Air sign. It looks to the future. In ancient times the axis of the Moon’s Nodes was depicted as the digestive system of a dragon, Draco, with the North Node as the Head, ingesting experience through time and excreting the waste at the South Node Tail. The capsule which housed the two astronauts on Saturday’s launch was named “Dragon.” One of the astronauts brought a plastic dragon which would float in zero G and let them know when they were weightless. The trip to the Space Station takes 19 hours. The length of a nodal phase is 19 months. So is a complete Venus cycle and eclipse cycles repeat every 19 years. We have three eclipses coming up, the first a lunar on the Full Moon this Friday.
As these Gemini twins launched into the Air, one commentator remarked, “A new generation continuing the Dream!” The symbol of Sagittarius is a Centaur – half animal, half man – pulling back on a bow and about to release an arrow aimed at some future star. Sadge is about aspiration, dreams of a better future, an ideal. Gemini Twins are pursuing that dream. One of the experiments they plan to conduct on the Space Station, is growing retinal tissue in zero gravity for transplants. How perfect is that for 2020? Maybe we will all see with new eyes!
One of the most encouraging aspects of this rocket launch was the cooperation between a civilian company and NASA. This does show us a different future, hopefully one that will prevent military invasion of space and promote a space program dedicated to exploration and discovery, based on cooperative enterprise, brilliant expertise and technology that lets us go where no-one has gone before, the Star Trek motto. These astronauts will leave the Space Station on the Equinox and return to Earth while the Sun is in Libra in September. Libra – sign of equality, peace and harmony. Let’s hold that thought.
June promises to be an eventful month and it gets its own launch with the lunar eclipse on June 5th. We’ll talk about all of this on Friday.
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