January 2009

Listening Conversations with the Moon The full moon of January takes place on Saturday, January 10 at 7:27pm Pacific Time, in the vedic lunar sign of Punarvasu. This will be an agreeable time - a chance to rejuvenate, restore, and make ourselves new again. Write this day/time into your calendar: Sunday, January 25 at 11:56pm Pacific Time. This new moon has truly excellent potential for us to listen and comprehend and digest what's being spoken with incredible subtlety, due to the solar eclipse on this day - but that means we each have to be listening - (and it's hard to be talking and listening at the same time.) Notice that what you Hear affects how you See.

Planning & Scheduling Living in Accord with the Seasons Annular Solar Eclipse, Sun./Mon., January 25/26, 2009 This solar eclipse is taking place in the lunar sign of Shravana (symbol = an ear.) On the macro level, we may see this eclipse affecting the inauguration of our next president. Obama's inaugural address may sound dead serious in tone, even grim. Since the solar eclipse is a few degrees away from Obama's natal Jupiter, we'll be hearing less about how America is the greatest nation, and more about how we must perform our chores, even though we're living on privileged soil. On the micro level, We, as one, living, breathing organism, will be able to "hear" life differently. If we're lucky, we'll be able to hear beyond our differences, into that aspect of us all that is truly the same; we'll have more access to what lies beyond our literal, empirical selves; and we'll be seeing beyond the surface, through "the veils." However, rather than being a joyride, this subtler attunement will likely develop as the result of challenges. In the beginning, we may be reliving the Tower of Babel theme: everyone talking at once, speaking in different languages, unable to understand each other. So make it a point to ask questions, and then really listen to the answers. A suggestion: late Sunday evening, take a meditative walk in a natural setting. Be as quiet and still as your circumstance will allow as you walk, and really listen. A solar eclipse occurs because the moon moves directly between the earth and sun. The electromagnetic, and symbolic implications of this are potent. Certain 'frequencies' will 'come in on the radio' that don't usually. Lunar Eclipse, Mon., February 9, 2009 This lunar eclipse will take place in the lunar sign of Ashlesha (shakti: the power to inflict with poison.) This looks pretty bad for the real estate market, on the macro level. (The effects of this eclipse will be felt until the end of July, 2009.) It's also not a good sign for the U.S. economy. It also presents implications for western medicine: R&D being done on antibiotics may be struggling to match the virulence of newly emerging bacteria. On the good side, these next six months present huge benefits to anyone electing to do deep, honest, uncomfortable, psychological introspection.

An Excerpt from "Nature" by Ralph Waldo Emerson Because of this radical correspondence between visible things and human thoughts, savages, who have only what is necessary, converse in figures. As we go back in history, language becomes more picturesque, until its infancy, when it is all poetry; or, all spiritual facts are represented by natural symbols. The same symbols are found to make the original elements of all languages. It has moreover been observed, that the idioms of all languages approach each other in passages of the greatest eloquence and power. And as this is the first language, so is it the last. This immediate dependence of language upon nature, this conversion of an outward phenomenon into a type of somewhat in human life, never loses its power to affect us. It is this which gives that piquancy to the conversation of a strong-natured farmer or back-woodsman, which all men relish. Thus is nature an interpreter, by whose means man converses with his fellow men. A man's power to connect his thought with its proper symbol, and so utter it, depends on the simplicity of his character, that is upon his love of truth and his desire to communicate it without loss. The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language. When simplicity of character and the sovereignty of ideas is broken up by the prevalence of secondary desires, the desire of riches, the desire of pleasure, the desire of power, the desire of praise, - and duplicity and falsehood take place of simplicity and truth, the power over nature as an interpreter of the will, is in a degree lost; new imagery ceases to be created, and old words are perverted to stand for things which are not; a paper currency is employed when there is no bullion in the vaults. In due time, the fraud is manifest, and words lose all power to stimulate the understanding or the affections. Hundreds of writers may be found in every long-civilized nation, who for a short time believe, and make others believe, that they see and utter truths, who do not of themselves clothe one thought in its natural garment, but who feed unconsciously upon the language created by the primary writers of the country, those, namely, who hold primarily on nature. But wise men pierce this rotten diction and fasten words again to visible things; so that picturesque language is at once a commanding certificate that he who employs it, is a man in alliance with truth and God. The moment our discourse rises above the ground line of familiar facts, and is inflamed with passion or exalted by thought, it clothes itself in images. A man conversing in earnest, if he watch his intellectual processes, will find that always a material image, more or less luminous, arises in his mind, contemporaneous with every thought, which furnishes the vestment of the thought. Hence, good writing and brilliant discourse are perpetual allegories. This imagery is spontaneous. It is the blending of experience with the present action of the mind. It is proper creation. It is the working of the Original Cause through the instruments he has already made.