What the World Needs Now Is
Wisdom
Sophia/Wisdom
There
was once a king in Israel named Solomon, a son of King David, the
shepherd boy who slew a giant, and Bathsheba, the beautiful one who
stole a king’s heart. After David died, his son Solomon became king
of Israel.
The
first thing Solomon did after he was crowned was to go to the
sanctuary of Gibeon, a holy place where the Hebrew god, Yahweh, spoke
to a seeker in dreams.
And
that night, Yahweh came to Solomon in a dream and said:
“Ask
of me what you will and I will grant it to you.”
And in the dream, Solomon
said: “You showed great mercy and kindness to my father David while
he was king, for he loved you. And now you have shown him even
greater love by letting his son sit on his throne after his death.”
“You, O Lord, have now made
me king over a great people, and I feel like a little child. How can
I rule over them if I don’t know how?”
“Therefore, I ask you for
an understanding heart to judge your people, so I can discern between
good and bad. I ask you for the Wisdom to judge your people and be a
good king.”
Now you might ask “what is
Wisdom?” Why would a king ask for Wisdom above power or glory or
victory in the field of battle? But Solomon knew what he was asking
for.
With you [God] is Sophia
[Lady Wisdom], she who knows your works, she who was present when you
made the world; she understands what is pleasing in your eyes and
what agrees with your commandments. (Wisdom 9:9)
And Yahweh was pleased with
Solomon for asking for this gift. And Yahweh said: “Because you
have asked for Wisdom and have not asked for a long life for
yourself, or riches, or power over your enemies, but instead seek
Wisdom, I will give you what you ask for. I will give you a wise and
understanding heart. And no one before or after you will be
remembered as you are – the wise king.”
And then Yahweh added: “And
I will give you the things you have not asked me for, both riches and
honor, and there will be no other king like you in all your days.
Just promise that you will walk in my ways, and keep my commandments
as your father David did, and I will give you a long life.”
Then Solomon awoke, and
remembered his dream. And went back to Jerusalem and stood before the
Ark of the Covenant of the Lord and gave thanks.
What
would you ask for if your God promised you anything you wanted? Who
would pick Wisdom, as Solomon did, when offered that miraculous gift?
How many of our leaders have asked for a wise and understanding heart
above all else? Isn't Wisdom exactly what we need now to deal with
this world-wide pandemic and economic crisis?
Do
we ask for Wisdom as we sit home, watching Netflix and playing
games?Perhaps we don’t ask for Wisdom because we don’t feel the
burden of responsibility that Solomon felt for his people. But if we
don’t take responsibility for ourselves and our world, who will?
Freedom implies responsibility.
Will
we ask to be the Wise King, the Wise Teacher/ the Wise Queen and Wise
Priestess? Don't you think this is necessary now? Each of us holds a
part of these archetypes. The King or Queen archetype within us means
taking responsibility for the people and the type of society we live
in. Teacher and Priestess archetypes engender within us growth and
awareness of many realities.
If there was ever a time in our
human history when we need Wisdom, it is now. We are living in
extraordinary times, a moment of supreme destiny where the human race
can and must participate consciously in our own evolution. This
evolution is both personal and collective, opening us to new
capacities for co-creation and offering us new possibilities for
cultural transformation. For the cultural paradigm that we live in is
dying, but it is not going gracefully. We need a new way to
understand our world and our place in it. And then we have to create
a new and more viable way of living here on our beautiful planet,
Earth.
It’s true we live in chaotic
and changing times, and so people live in fear – not only fear of
COV-19 but of war, disease, poverty, death, violence and the unknown.
People have been content to remain unconscious of the damage done to
our environment, but we are already living with the results of these
misguided policies. This virus comes from Mother Earth's wounded
biosphere. It is Her response to our irresponsibility.
But to allow ourselves to fall
into more unconsciousness and despair is unimaginative and lazy. We
have been given the supreme gift of free will and so our choices do
matter. What if, by choosing to follow Lady Wisdom’s call, we learn
to turn our god-like creative imagination to transforming our society
and re-creating the world rather than going back to business as
usual, with our machines polluting the Earth, our wars creating
record numbers of refugees and our conspicuous consumption going over
the top? Do we really need more junk from Amazon?
With all our innovation and
creativity, we do have it in our power to create a ‘heaven on
earth’ if we choose. It seems we might only have this small window
of time to begin this process. Westerners are the ones holding the
power now. Our patriarchal paradigm that shaped our worldview and
brought us to this crisis point does not want to transfer its power
to the children who will have to live in the future world. While the
world has stopped to deal with this pandemic, we each need to imagine
what we really want the world to do and be when we all come back from
our self-isolation.
We who are living in these most
interesting times have a challenge before us – will we be strong
enough and committed enough to change our habits and use our free
will to create peace and plenty here on this beautiful Earth of ours?
Or will we continue to allow the death and destruction that is
rampant in our present world to rage on until we are all lost. Each
of us holds the world in our hands through our choices. It is time to
take responsibility for those choices and evolve into a greater
vision of who we might become.
If we choose to take up our
responsibility to all of life, then we absolutely have to be ‘wise
as serpents and harmless as doves’ (Matthew 10:16). Unfortunately,
the mystics who wrote about Wisdom say that although Lady Wisdom
cries out in the streets for people to come to her so she can give us
her gifts, most people ignore her. Could it be because Wisdom is
always imagined as feminine?
Wisdom comes from our feminine
right brain – our imagination, our intuition and our emotional
intelligence. Since all of us have access to both brains, let's start
using them instead of falling back into our reptilian brain of fight
or flight.
Wisdom comes to us when we trust
our body soul, our intuition, our gut feelings, our imaginations and
then use our masculine left brain logic to decide what we need to do.
And always, we have to take our values and virtues into
consideration. It's interesting that we call it the 'corona -virus' –
corona implies the crown chakra, the place where we connect to our
Higher Self and spiritual guidance as well as Crone – the crown of
feminine being and wisdom.
I would imagine that this means
we have to re-connect with our higher selves to understand what this
moment in time wants from us. We can discover messages in the books
we read, the movies we watch, the inspiration that comes from being
out in Nature. But most especially from our dreams and our meditation
and our shamanic journeys.
I watched Frozen II the
other night. It was all about change. The little snowman. Olaf, said
something in the beginning of the movie about change. Change
mocks us with her beauty. I
love that! We say we want to change because we see the beauty and
necessity in it. The need for it. And yet, are we changing our habits
or just waiting to get back to them? Is change mocking us or are we
willing to embrace her beauty?
Taurus crescent Moon with Venus
above
The other night, the Taurus
crescent Moon hung in the western sky with Venus shining brightly
above her. Orion the Hunter rose up behind them, seeking his quarry.
This Taurus Moon opens us to the Earth's imagination and with Venus,
the Evening Star, they both embody the Wisdom of the Earth. Taurus
embodies the Spirit of Aries' primal fire.
The Moon and Venus embody what
we need now to survive and thrive during this crucial time in our
history, this time of conscious evolution. The Taurus crescent Moon
invites us to envision what we want in this Aries lunar cycle. Venus
in Taurus embodies our need to feel safe and secure, healthy and
creative, compassionate and passionate. They're working together to
help us imagine a new Earth and to help each of us create our own
unique life and beliefs.
When we come out of this, will
our world go back to the same old, same old ways? Or will people
demand and create different ways to do work and school, travel and
leisure, creativity and life. Will we as a culture open ourselves to
the many dimensions of reality beyond the physical? Can we look
behind the veils that separate us and notice how connected we are on
different levels – not just the material.
I think Saturn's journey through
Aquarius until the beginning of July will help us open up spaces
we've keep hidden from ourselves. And with Mars' entry into Aquarius
on Monday March 30th and conjunction with Saturn on
Tuesday March 31st, we might see a hint of what is coming
in the future when Jupiter and Saturn meet on December 21, 2020 to
begin a new cycle of cultural change, a new model of being that helps
us participate and prosper in the collective.
There have been 4 cycles that
have ended and begun while in the sign of Capricorn these past
months. New cycles of how society and the individual work. The big
one was on January 12, 2020 when Saturn and Pluto combined to destroy
(Pluto) old social structures (Saturn) that no longer work. But also,
out of the ashes will come rebirth (Pluto) of new forms and
structures of society. Then Mars and Pluto meet up on March 23, 2020
to begin real work on things. On April 4, 2020 Jupiter and Pluto will
met up, starting a new cycle of expansion – of death and/or
rebirth.
All three of these cycles
end and began at 23-26* Capricorn. Everyone will feel the effects but
for anyone with planets at these degrees, especially in Aries,
Cancer, Libra or Capricorn, who will be doubly energized for
transformation.
As our regular reality is ripped
away, this is the moment to look at our lives symbolically. If we can
imagine ourselves on the hero's journey, we're at the moment where
the hero/ine encounters the darkness, the danger, the initiation. We
have a collective responsibility (Saturn in Aquarius) to work on our
own darkness, our wounds, our unconsciousness until we get it. Things
are going to bubble up for us – as we are stuck in small places.
Don't waste this hard time – this is the darkness where the new
seed has to grow in.
This is a lesson about evolving
our souls. It is a moment for conscious evolution.
So look for the blessings of our
self-isolation. We've all been given a chance to meditate on what we
want to do and where we want to put our energies, individual energies
which make up the larger collective. It's a perfect time to really
transform our society. We're experiencing a breakdown. Why not turn
it into a breakthrough?
Selections from Wisdom's
Daughters: How Women Will Change the World
by Cathy Pagano.
