What do we love as things fall apart?

This Scorpio Full Moon--the Wesak Moon under which the Buddha was enlightened--is all about facing your fears and letting things go that need to go.

Here's a poem by one of my favorite poets.

A Morning Offering

I bless the night that nourished my heart
To set the ghosts of longing free
Into the flow and figure of dream
That went to harvest from the dark
Bread for the hunger no one sees.

All that is eternal in me
Welcome the wonder of this day,
The field of brightness it creates
Offering time for each thing
To arise and illuminate.

I place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Wave of desire I am shore to
And all beauty drawn to the eye.

May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.

May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.

~ John O'Donohue ~    To Bless the Space Between Us

Living a Symbolic Life: Spring Equinox

At Spring Equinox, we come to a balance of light and dark, of death and rebirth.  Of Self and Other.  This next year we have to learn how to be in balance, within ourselves and with each other.    

And that means we have to value and respect our intuition as well as our thinking, women as equal partners with men.   The Divine Feminine is returning to our world, not to take over, but to bring to birth a new vision of life, which the Divine Masculine helps her build.   A new union of opposites is taking place—equality between feminine and masculine energies.  Men and women, masculine and feminine spirit united and working together will help birth the next stage of life here on our Mother Earth.   The test is if we can finally honor and listen to Feminine Wisdom, the intuitive knowledge of how to heal our world, and finally do something about it!  So far, patriarchy has stopped us.  But it won’t win.  Evolution happens.

The tests will come through our relationships and personal needs, through standing up with courage and leading when it’s called for, by being creative and adding our voices to our collective dialogue.  

  

The Cosmic Story tells us that we can succeed in changing the world if we do our part.   We have to take action, in whatever we feel passionate about.  

The Grand Cross that’s been forming in the skies all Winter is telling us a story—a story about energies that need expressing.  If we listen to the story, we can consciously use these energies so we have a chance to be catalysts of change in the world.  Or we can let the energies—and powers that be—keep us out of the story and use us. 

That means we have to change ourselves before anything else can happen. 

So please vote to live out your highest Self, the Self your soul came into this lifetime to be-- to heal the Earth and evolve humanity.  This Self is a union of Sophia and the Christ, Wisdom and Self-Awareness.  We’ve been cut off from it for too long.  Now we can see who we are meant to be.  Conscious Human Beings!

  That’s what the Cosmic Story is about now—it’s say we need to go on the heroine’s journey that takes us within; and we also need to go on the hero’s journey which takes us out into the world.  Know which of these journeys is before you—and take it!  

Send Your Love Into the Future.

Blessing for St. Patrick's Day--John O'Donohue

Beannacht -- John O'Donohue

Beannacht
("Blessing")

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

~ John O'Donohue ~

(Echoes of Memory)

Here's a good Pisces Sun/Virgo Moon meditation from Thomas Merton.

In Silence

Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
To speak your

Name.
Listen
To the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
Are you? Whose
Silence are you?

Who (be quiet)
Are you (as these stones
Are quiet). Do not
Think of what you are
Still less of
What you may one day be.
Rather
Be what you are (but who?) be
The unthinkable one
You do not know.

O be still, while
You are still alive,
And all things live around you
Speaking (I do not hear)
To your own being,
Speaking by the Unknown
That is in you and in themselves.

"I will try, like them
To be my own silence:
And this is difficult. The whole
World is secretly on fire. The stones
Burn, even the stones
They burn me. How can a man be still or
Listen to all things burning? How can he dare
To sit with them
When all their silence
Is on fire?"

~ Thomas Merton ~

(The Strange Islands: Poems by Thomas Merton)

Some Thoughts on Creativity

I'm linking you to a wonderful article on Creativity.  It reminds me that this is how we connect with Lady Wisdom-- not just with our right and left brain, but with the combination that includes the mystical brain.

"Creativity works in mysterious and often paradoxical ways. Creative thinking is a stable, defining characteristic in some personalities, but it may also change based on situation and context. Inspiration and ideas often arise seemingly out of nowhere and then fail to show up when we most need them, and creative thinking requires complex cognition yet is completely distinct from the thinking process.

Neuroscience paints a complicated picture of creativity. As scientists now understand it, creativity is far more complex than the right-left brain distinction would have us think (the theory being that left brain = rational and analytical, right brain = creative and emotional). In fact, creativity is thought to involve a number of cognitive processes, neural pathways and emotions, and we still don't have the full picture of how the imaginative mind works. "

Continue at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/04/creativity-habits_n_4859769.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=730435b=facebook

A Pisces Prayer

I HAVE COME INTO THIS WORLD TO SEE THIS -- Hafiz

I have come into this world to see this: the sword drop from men's hands even at the height of their arc of anger because we have finally realized there is just one flesh to wound and it is His - the Christ's, our Beloved.

I have come into this world to see this: all creatures hold hands as we pass through this miraculous existence we share on the way to even a greater being of soul, a being of just ecstatic light, forever entwined and at play with Him.

  I have come into this world to hear this: every song the earth has sung since it was conceived in the Divine's womb and began spinning from His wish, every song by wing and fin and hoof, every song by hill and field and tree and woman and child, every song of stream and rock, every song of tool and lyre and flute, every song of gold and emerald and fire, every song the heart should cry with magnificent dignity to know itself as God: for all other knowledge will leave us again in want and aching—only imbibing the glorious Sun will complete us.

I have come into this world to experience this: men so true to love they would rather die before speaking an unkind word, men so true their lives are His covenant—the promise of hope. I have come into this world to see this: the sword drop from men's hand even at the height of their arc of rage because we have finally realized there is just one flesh we can wound.  ~ Hafiz ~

(Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West by Daniel Ladinsky)

Living the Symbolic Life: The Pisces Challenge

Living the Symbolic Life:  The Pisces Challenge

                                                Pisces: The Fish

While the Sun is in Pisces, our awareness is called back to the Source, after traveling around the whole zodiac.  The ocean is an apt symbol of the womb of the Collective Unconscious—the place of memory where we find the essence of what it means to live here on Earth.  Love and anger, hardship and plenty, death and birth, family and country—it contains memories of all of life’s experiences, human and otherwise. This is where new life gestates. It is the source of the Wisdom of Life, the World Soul.  

So after flying to Aquarius’ starry heights, we are called to dive into the deepest oceans to regenerate our lives through the agency of those heavenly lights.  If we take that photo of Earthrise to heart, we need to get out of the old patriarchal story that refuses to take that image seriously.  

We can dissolve the old patriarchal story within us during the Sun’s journey through Pisces.  Like the Catholic’s Lent or Ra’s nighttime journey through the Underworld, humans need to take the time to let go of, withdraw from and dissolve what no longer serves our new vision in preparation for the new life of spring. 

Your new story of life will shape your energies this year, energies which will emerge into the world with the Spring Equinox.  So consider sacrificing and making sacred (Pisces) your daily schedule for the next month by adding some spiritual practices into your day: 

1.     Find quality quiet time to listen to your body, your heart and your mind.

2.    Meditate on letting go of old fears and patriarchal beliefs.

3.    Imagine the gift you want to give to the world.

2014 is a 7 year, a year of completion, initiation and conscious choice.  The energies are building toward a strong stellar configuration in April, so taking the time now to get balanced and centered will help you tremendously in a few months. 

If Winter Solstice 2012 was the end of a great age, then 2013 was the beginning of the next stage—the gestation of a new age.  Back in the 60s we sang about it as the Age of Aquarius.  Our vision was very idealistic and full of fun.  The Baby Boomers are the Pluto in Leo generation, and we not only want to stay young till we die, we want to give our creativity to the world.  Now that we’re becoming senior citizens, don’t you think we’re called to step into the world with wisdom and compassion to help our children bring about the changes we envisioned back in the 60s, since the same issues are confronting us once again at this turning point in the cycle between Pluto and Uranus.  

        

When we let the Cosmic Story inspire us and choose to live a symbolic life, we can more easily bring that heavenly energy down to earth. The other option is to remain caught up in the fears and illusions of patriarchy, fighting the energy of change. 

Here are some images to meditate on for Pisces.

Genevieve Cseh, Sedna, Inuit Goddess of the Sea

Sedna symbolizes some of the goddess energy of Pisces.  She sacrificed (Pisces) her fingers to create the bounty of the seas, exemplifying the need sacrifice our ego’s perceptions and open to what comes to us from the deep unconscious. When we turn our attention to our dreams, we find new life and new sustenance.  The Collective Unconscious is open to us during Pisces.  

Kali is a good example of Plutonian goddess energy with her demand that we release the old life so we can engender the new life waiting to emerge in us.  But first we have to die to the old vision. 

Christ embodies the energies of Pisces—the need to say, ‘Not my will but thine’, to surrender to the Source of Life, to sacrifice our ego desires for the good of the world.  Christ speaks to our need to become the light of the world.

These two energies—feminine and masculine—encourage us with the knowledge that sacrifice is part of our human heritage, that life is not all about our desires and needs, but about the needs we share with others.  The more compassion and imagination we bring to our own time of ‘letting go’, the more wisdom we will gain from our sojourn through Pisces.

So who will engage in the Pisces challenge with me?  The challenge involves releasing the old stories of separation, domination, and violence because we have discovered the new story that we are all one family sharing Mother Earth.  Through these times of crisis and transition, we will learn to live together in a very different way.   We will create a new civilization which is founded on absolute equality between feminine perceptions of life and masculine ones.  We will live in the mystical brain where right and left sides of the brain work together to give us a better vision of how we can live in harmony with the Earth and each other.  Let us create a world full of depth and light and beauty, where we take responsibility for our actions and treat each other and the Earth with courtesy and respect.  

Starting on Tuesday, February 18^th, when the Sun goes into Pisces for a month, create a different daily routine for yourself, one which includes playing in those creative, inner spaces where we can touch the Source and imagine a different way to live in the world.

Merry meet, and merry part, and merry meet again!  Blessed Be!

Cathy