It seems to me that collectively we are coming out of a huge and painful past of trauma and slowly growing in emotional intelligence. I was struck by this listening to an interview David Letterman did with Rapper Jay Z in which they both addressed both their own wounding as well as the struggle of black Americans in dealing with racism.. We all know there is still so much lovelessness and bigotry out there in certain sectors. The need for the heroic egoic types to scapegoat those more steeped in the primal or deeply feminine ways is still strong.. The need for angry unhappy people to find targets to displace pain or inheld frustrations and anger does not end , however, the journey to heal all of the fractures that persist for us both individually and collectively goes on and it will continue.
There was a little more light for me waking up today. Monday was super tough with no therapy again but I posted on Facebook and got lots of support and talking to Lifeline helped.. What also came to me is how hard I am still on myself and how hard I still continue to try when joy seems absent for me and the world at large. Really I do not congratulate myself for the ways I help and the love I continue to try to show and yet I must admit lately to being so very tired. At the moment I am being told by my guides that I need to seek my power in the higher realms while continue to reach out and give of my wisdom. There is a light that this world needs and it consists to my mind in bearing witness to what is broken or ripe for transformation and in need of our showing it both tenderness and mercy. Anger and rage can fuel a lot of us coming out of traumas that cauterized us emotionally but the healing does require some kind of alchemizing of the pain.. Suffering does have a wisdom, purpose and meaning but only as we come to see the truth of its inevitability as well as the fact its not a conspiracy, often it comes out of a deeply unconscious past.
To my mind it will be those of us who can bear witness to the darkness and havoc wrought by damaging evolutionary forces that will enable us to emerge collectively out of a lot of the fracture this past dark heroic egoic patriarchal age has caused. Jungian therapist Marion Woodman spoke often about the dark feminine and the abandoned soul child who had to go into hiding in the face of hostile killing forces of idealism and perfectionism. I do not know if this makes sense to you but to my mind the rise of Nazism in some way reflected a rise of unhealthy narcissism that has made the reigning consciousness to turn both brutal and hostile to the feminine and dark feminine. Often as she noted and Jung too the healing light of wisdom only grows as we make the darkness (or shadowy), or held in shame inner parts of ourselves and in others as well as the world more conscious, perhaps most importantly, through some kind of intense purification process which requires strength, and vulnerability.
On this note the meeting of Mercury and Venus with Pluto over the past week has taken me back into painful past relationship experiences and made me do another kind of mini life review which is never that easy or light. I see how much I was always given the feeling of not quite measuring up.. How often I was not only abandoned but also abandoned myself , how deeply I both internalized that pain and turned it against myself in hostile self criticism. I had no holding anywhere at all, no safe place at all in the world, no loving inner father (Saturn/Capricorn) with good healthy boundaries (Saturn.)
As an antidote to the dark time yesterday and in light of this and ongoing battles with my Inner Critic, today I am asking myself what would be the most loving thing to do.. I got very angry with someone today who I have been trying to support today who was out of communication and leaving me in the dark over some things, who then got upset with me for being upset about it.. Looking at my reaction I may then feel guilt but knowing what I have been through for this person over 5 years from the loving fatherly side I feel its okay to be feeling angry.. I need to honor those feelings which help me to see when it all is beginning to get too much and I am taking on too much responsibility. Doing the right and helpful things is something I am conditioned to do (Saturn Mars conjuct Moon… duty and responsibility before feelings) But the impact of that can be buried anger. (Mars Saturn). Being the responsible one, the one noticing, the one caring, the one reaching out, the one asking “how can I help” does take a toll. At the moment the more loving thing for me to do, is possibly to step back a bit and get a handle on where all of that anger is coming from and practice some forms of seeking joy, showing myself both tenderness and mercy as well as finding some ways to embrace life more freely and in a relaxed way today.
Another important theme I am being shown today is about the need for both rest and stillness. It seems to me lately coming a lot of fear and terror which began to increasingly mushroom since the advent of 9/11 for so many of us and life itself we have been running faster and faster. As our fascination with technology grows (which is a useful tool but a punishing and detrimental master) we face an inner threat, if our preoccupation with it removes us from feeling and staying contained in a more grounded rhythm not at odds with the organic and natural ones but ever more deeply in tune with them.
Considering that the blowing apart of the twin towers (a Gemini symbol, as Saturn was, at this time placed here with Pluto in Sagittarius opposing it) occurred during that opposition with the threat of Covid 19 forcing us to stop happening shortly after the meeting of both planets Saturn and Pluto in the earth sign of Capricorn, there is indeed a needed inner transformation (Pluto, changing Saturnian structures) occurring now coming 2 years out of that and facing yet again the issue of how a slowing down may actually allow the earth to heal as, for a time these Saturn Pluto forces forced a stop. Many found that a challenge, as in our increasingly fast paced society there is a value that seems to only be bequeathed in the ‘doing’ or busyness (business) side of life, in action for action’s sake, in a collective overvaluing of achievement, conquest, power over, and/or ‘success’ most often predicated on ‘winning’ or a financial basis, this can get to be fast and contracting and not open and meaningfull and expansive and vast.. It makes sleeping harder, anxiety larger and the toll place on the earth due to over consumption more hefty.
Such a heroic egoic point of view devalues the wisdom birthed through trials, downturns, defeat and suffering, as well as loss all of which may help us to see where our lives may have needed to undergo a necessary turn around or where outside forces impinging upon us have forced a necessary introversion, breaking apart or ‘awakening’, a kind of dark night of the soul which acts to assist us to birth a deeper wisdom into the truth of those impinging forces and flows we emerged out of and may feel ourselves, at times, being drowned or flooded and over run by.. In essence then we must stop and ask ourselves this :
What purpose is this breakdown, suffering, defeat, loss or challenge serving?
What opportunities is it awakening deep inside of me?.
My experience is that the negated ancestral tide of feeling does tend to revert and ‘flood’ the most open and vulnerable of us in the system and as we then undergo the breakdown and breaking open and into, the new seeds are actually being sewn at that so called ‘fallow’ period. Conjunctions or meetings of two planets especially collective ones such as Saturn and Pluto always signify the ‘sowing’ of such seeds within both persons and collectives. These blossoms into flowers and fruits at the opposition so to understand its outpourings we may then need to look back to past seeding periods. Venus relates to the feminine, inner beauty and values as well as creativity, Mercury to perceptions, communications and trade as well as siblings so when Pluto meets both we are having a new beginning in the transforming of our relationships to them.
Mercury turning retrograde also often co-incides with a stop/standstill energy and that retrograde in Pluto occurred a few days ago. Yesterday I spent significant parts of the day sitting doing nothing and when it felt yesterday like I was being crushed or drowned by the most overwhelming and obliterating force I just opened myself to feel it.. There were a lot of tears shed and my inner critic was especially punishing, powerful and toxic, but what I am being told today all of this crying was actually a sign of purifying and releasing huge backlogs of past pain around multiple anniversaries that occur at this time of year. As I mentioned yesterday, it was my older sister’s birthday (a Sun Sign Capricorn) and her life was so tragic, even if she is free now and in spirit. The terrible pain and breakdown I saw her go through was intense and had such an overwhelming effect on my own life, I absorbed all of that pain that ended up killing my father and I carried it and added to it over all of the years of my addiction and even was thrown about by it all in the last 28 years coming out of it an into the healing light of recovery. And yet that trial of what she underwent also taught me very valuable lessons, even if its ripple effects upon the family have been very very difficult and challenging.
Time to slow down now means I try also to stay closer to the ground (Capricorn rules both earth and nature, Saturn its ruler isfather time and also the organic natural cycles that we only over run at our peril). I see I have been over running myself too.. Devaluing my own need to just ‘be’ open, expand inwardly and ‘rest’. Allowing myself the slowing down and quiet time, as well as time in nature is restorative. Remembering to get out of my head and into my body also essential. Trauma sadly sets us at odds with the body which comes to feel unsafe. But we cannot open to or fully experience life when we feel that unsafe.. Maybe 9/11 did so much to make many of us feel unsafe and those feelings of unsafety grew with Covid, but what is it that we are really fearing and how much more deeply will we suffer if we are always allowing ourselves to be driven unconsciously by that inner fear and anxiety?
Emerging From The Dark Night 