“If a man could understand all the horror of the lives of ordinary people who are turning around in a circle of insignificant interests and insignificant aims, if he could understand what they are losing, he would understand that there can only be one thing that is serious for him — to escape from the general law, to be free. What can be serious for a man in prison who is condemned to death? Only one thing: How to save himself, how to escape: nothing else is serious.”

The new moon on August 1, 2008 is a solar eclipse. Eclipses have a bad reputation. This is related to the days when only kings and queens had their horoscopes prepared — and what might befall a ruler meant the entire village was going to catch hell in some way.

The fact that an eclipse involves an astronomical exactitude can, for humans, translate into a feeling of pressure or force that impacts our ascending or descending alignment, the toggle between sleep and consciousness.

In astrology, how things appear is just as important as how things actually are situated in the sky. So the appearance of the moon moving across the sun’s face, darkening him in the process, has a particular effect on us, especially for those able to physically witness the eclipse.

The eclipse event is anachronistic. It tweaks our cellular memory — the reptilian/mammalian part of the brain which has sensed the darkening from eclipses for eons. Imagine animals experiencing an eclipse. The oddness about the light waning. The eerie stillness. Things slow down externally, and a kind of wary watchfulness predominates. Think of the Moon card in the Tarot. Dreams confound, longings and desires feel jammed. Visions, imaginings intensify. It’s all about amplification and then movement — either backwards or forwards; decay or growth. Read more

Rumi composed a small eruption of a poem about love’s most beguiling and dangerous qualities. This gem of verse marks out, like a Morse code, the action, the alchemy of love. I’ve revisited this poem many times, and with each close reading new facets are revealed, sharper insights gleaned. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

Love comes sailing through and I scream.
Love sits beside me like a private supply of itself.
Love puts away the instruments
and takes off the silk robes. Our nakedness
together changes me completely.

The opening conveys abrupt immediacy. Things are one way one minute and then — a surge: “Love comes sailing through…” This evokes the ocean, perhaps the Sargasso Sea where we drift; the humdrum trance of our day-to-day life. But then the majesty of love glides in. And also, the word ’sailing’ connotes a particular sound, the movement of Cupid’s arrow perhaps?

Love’s entrance — and then: a scream. Not a yell or a shout. A scream. A kind of fright or terror. The shock of love. Rumi is writing about the ego’s perception and reaction to love. Unnerving, startling — a harbinger for what exactly?

P.D. Ouspensky wrote in Tertium Organum: “Love is the potent force that tears off all masks, and men who run away from love do so in order that they may preserve their masks.” I guess that would explain the screaming.

Should we endure, there’s the promise of an intimate alignment, a regulation that calms the initial shock: “Love sits beside me like a private supply of itself.” This line enchants me, the image it calls forth. “…like a private supply of itself.” I imagine this speaks to the notion that we are each a localized, unique expression of love — and when we experience love we’re given the opportunity, through the mirror of the Beloved, to remember, to see this condition. We relax, perhaps unaware of the disarming that is to come.

“Love puts away the instruments and takes off the silk robes.” Now Rumi’s describing another love action — the revealing, stripping, making naked. The initial reading is a prelude to sex, and this can work in the poem too. But there’s something more; the instruments, the clothing — the ways the ego displays its talents, or how it hides behind a facade — all of that’s got to go in the presence of love. Read more

“Why does death catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking. We should amass half dressed in long lines like tribesmen and shake gourds at each other, to wake up: instead we watch television and miss the show.”
– Annie Dillard

“The most important insight needed for a student to move from the deficient lack of support to the actual state of support is the recognition that the feeling of helplessness, of not knowing what to do to be oneself, is not an actual deficiency, nor a personal failing. It is rather, the recognition of a fundamental truth about the self, which is that we cannot do anything in order to be, for to be is not an activity. We can come to this understanding only through the cessation of intentional inner activity. At this point, not to know what to do is a matter of recognizing the natural state of affairs, for since there is nothing that we can do to be, then it is natural that we cannot know what to do. There is nothing to know because such knowledge is impossible. Nobody knows what to do to be, and the sooner we recognize this, the easier is our work on self-realization. In fact, feeling that we don’t know what to do to be ourselves is the beginning of the insight that we don’t need to do anything.” Read more

The new moon is a conjunction between the sun and moon, a marriage and co-mergence of the masculine solar principle and the feminine lunar principle. A conjunction corresponds to the alchemical phase of coniunctio — the end result of the alchemical procedure when the opposites are successfully united. This blending releases a third force or condition — something unique, not experienced before. This nexus between the solar and lunar function sets the vibrational tenor for the entire 28 days that follow the new moon phase.

At full moon the secret of the sun moon marriage is revealed. The July 2008 new moon took place on July 3 at 12 degrees of Cancer. The July full moon is Friday, July 18. Tonight marks the first facet of the full moon’s dissemination. What are you sensing?

A Cancer new moon shifts our attention to issues of nourishment and sustainment. How and where our soul finds solace and harbor. Generally we think of Cancerian nourishment as it relates to food and being mothered (or mothering) — a quality of emotional support that allows us to relax and feel a quality of love that is abiding. Read more