Month: October 2017

In Vedic astrology, my chart has two exalted planets, Jupiter and Saturn, the Guru, and the master of difficulty, delay, and setbacks. It’s a powerful combination as it requires me, or maybe predisposes me to seek the wisdom of what is difficult. Recently when the Cassini space shuttle beamed pictures of Saturn, I was thrilled to have their up close views of that majestic planet. They revealed what is typically unseen.

When he was in Kindergarten, my nephew Stephen, when asked why fell behind in his school work, said, “There’s a lotta things out there and they all gotta move.” There are a lot of things out there. The universe is teeming with the unseen, both manifest and unmanifest, beings and fields of energy. This is the creation point of the Feminine mystery. It can be very subtle, but it is ever present. When we contemplate, meditate, or pray, it’s this mystery that responds. It shows up in intuition, synchronicity, coincidence. The knock on the door, the lump in the throat, the gaze that finds ours across space. When we find ourselves moving in harmony with what is happening, we are in the arms of the Feminine. This is true free will; we follow where we are led.

When we relax into the Feminine, we create a receptacle, a place and a way to hold what arises. We are receptive and vulnerable without being passive. We create the space, set our intentions, and focus our awareness on what is arising. It’s a stance of being rather than doing. Yet it can be difficult to differentiate between these, between the healthy Feminine and the healthy Masculine, which are only facets of Being, dancing, interacting forces. For me, the symbol for Ying and Yang is useful here, the way the dark and the light flow against each other. Or the nearly permeable boundaries between colors in a rainbow. Where does one end and the other start?

Holding the Feminine is like that. The healthy Feminine shows discernment when we heed our intuitions, when we lean into the rub between idea and reality, when we allow ourselves to feel what is painful knowing that it will stretch us beyond our comfort zone AND that we have the resources to remain grounded in consciousness even as our hearts are breaking.

There is so much that is unseen, in our own bodies, and lives, and in the world around us. A woman in China holds her new baby. A man in Norway gazes out a hospital window. Your neighbor is answering a phone call that will change her life. You cannot see them, but they are there: love, loss, birth, death, mercy, cruelty, generosity, manifestation of your deepest desires and fears.

When we risk resting in what is, we are rewarded with the experience of life. When we resist, we limit our ability to know deeply the texture of human existence. Resting opens us to pure feeling: joy, love, grief. Resisting hardens us into deflecting shells. We fear that we cannot contain it all. It will overwhelm, even annihilate us. So we turn away, close our eyes, ears, hearts. We harden ourselves with the belief that it makes us safe.

Meanwhile, life continues to unfold, blossom, ripen, fade, and die over and over and over again. You are big enough. You contain multitudes. There is always more room to receive, but only if you allow yourself to relax and expand. To stretch until it hurts and then resting, stretch again. This is the Feminine principle at work, like birthing; once it begins, we cannot choose to stop it. We must open to it to bring it into the light. Once there, it can be seen, known, familiar, more manageable. Breathe into your own dark, tender places. What do you find there?  Can you open to it, speak it, know it? Can you relax into the mysterious embrace of the Feminine?