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New Moon in Libra September 2014: Protected Aft

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New Moon September 23/24, 2014 @ 01 degrees Libra 8 minutes
09.23 11:14 p.m. PDT 09.24 02:14 a.m EDT

new moon sept 2014 chartI dreamed of an angel dressed in gold, golden hair floating on the breeze slipping
out from the fluttering wings that pushed me sideways. I peered around desire, reached out to hold onto fractured belief as it suddenly tumbled over the edge of rationality. The absence of the Moon made me feel that much lonelier. After awhile I dove into the abyss rather than stand in between wanting and knowing, a combination of courage, desperation and inevitability urged me there. The letting go was not even a thought. The letting go occurred as there is nothing to hold onto in any case.

This New Moon: Communicating through the spirit of equilibrium, communicating without words. Knowing without speaking what wants to be expressed. Feeling that the lack of effort is the most natural thing like the easy way in which butterflies are lifted from flower to bush.

Libra, where we look to the other to reflect to us—am I missing anything? What do I not see about my self that this other shows me? How I judge my self? Where I project my own fears? How I love my self…once we are past all of that, and it does happen to a greater or lesser extent for many people, what shows up is another aspect of Venus that is compassion, from the depths of the heart, great empathy for the human condition as it is all me. When I love my self, I love all things—one and the same. I do not support the story but am available as the essence of the Absolute, God, Allah, “that”.

We need not fear this Being that is beyond suffering. It does not mean ‘disappearance of this’, only a lack of attachment to this in a way that is not peace and harmony. How we define things can limit our opportunity to ‘let go’ or to commit to the pathless path; the journey to awareness—there is no separation only when I take things personally do I create separation or when I judge things or do not accept what is in this moment.

The need to get somewhere, do something, accomplish something along the path may cause frustration, anger, sadness. There is nothing that can be done as what we most desire, the freedom to Be, is. Do not cling to any thoughts as truth. They are all based on the past and have patience.

“Sip the tea. This is not a race. The experience goes on and on…”—Vanessa Stone

When we sip the tea imagine a clear sky, a comfortable chair. There is no where to go and no one to go anywhere. Rest in the knowing that everything I need is right here, right now in this moment. Whatever appears on the screen of awareness is based upon a thought from the past and no matter how ‘unsettling’ to the ego do not become immersed in the drama. It may be true, that no matter what we do, it has no effect at all upon the true nature, that which is ‘no matter’ what. Family calamity, political injustice, the abuse of personal power, has no effect upon the Absolute. It is the Absolute. Choice happens, reaction happens but the apparent result of these has no importance as it does not alter what is.

This New Moon: Is conjunct the fixed star Markeb in the constellation Argo Navis the great ship that carried Jason and the Argonauts to their goal of acquiring the Golden Fleece. Markeb is situated in the buckler of the ship. That is a position aft, a cover for a portal there that prevents water from accessing the interior of the ship. Like a shield then, it is associated with protection and in times of turmoil offers safety from elements that might otherwise turtle the ship. It instills great trust in whatever is happening and the realization that it is as big or small as my mind tells me it is. If my mind remains quiet, it is nothing at all. It is nothing at all.

The ego is lost. It finds no employment here. In the vast emptiness there is nothing for it to do, nothing to control. Breathing happens all by it self. The mist lifts to reveal calm waters that remain no matter what appears to be going on externally to that. I access the stillness. I am the stillness.

New Moon, in the darkness I see nothing, feel only my heartbeat. As the sun rises, the movie begins; the mind is called into action with its endless stream of suggestions. When once again I fall asleep there is nothing. If only, when the movie begins again, I might not recite the story of what I think is going on so that what is really happening might be witnessed without interpretation.

Good Monday Morning…Full Moon, Full Heart

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from Awakening the Soul

by Master Li Jungfeng, Shengzhen.org

blog monday morning sept 8

In the core of the soul that yearns to be free

shines the light of a gentle moonbeam

Piercing the daunting darkness of illusion

Lightly caressing the heart open to see

a sky so clear, air so refreshing

it is so familiar though still a memory

questions arise. What lies beyond?

Is it just a moonbeam? Will it stay a wish?

Nourished by intention blessed by sweet effort

with a little bit of faith and a pure sense of wonder

ever so gently so slowly

the moon of the heart is revealed

Full Moon September 8, 2014: Loss of Mind

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Full Moon September 8, 2014 @ 16 degrees Pisces 19 minutes
09:38 p.m. EDT 06:38 p.m. PDT

“I have put my heart and soul into my work, and have lost my mind
in the process.”~Vincent Van Gogh (Mars conjunct Venus and Neptune in Pisces)

full moon chart sept 2014(select chart for full size version)

(From this limited perspective, this is what I have to offer. If you read between the lines though you may find the freedom there).

So it is that during this full moon in Pisces we find an opportunity to slip between the warp and the weft, to go beyond the mere capacity of our minds to control and manipulate our experience here. If we allow our selves to be vulnerable we may discover that the object of our fear is a vague thought whose inception is traced back to a moment of separation that jolted us into a new kind of awareness—existence in physical reality and all the seeming limitations that presented. Any thoughts about what might exist prior to this awareness seem only to end in nothing; end in a void so that the assumption of annihilation or non-existence would appear to be the alternative.

We are guided by subconscious yearnings that would mend the rift and lead us into realization of a seamless existence, pure authenticity, continuous unfolding from the heart. Utter knowingness of what is, as all that can be, and faith that there is nothing that needs to be different; nothing out of place and nothing to want. In the deepest folds of stillness there is rest, peace. What may have at one point been perceived as nothing/annihilation is in fact everything and I am ‘that’, not separate from. We have determination now to confront what has limited us from this knowing, from waking up to the great sea in which is form and what occurs when I no longer view the form as separate from the sea.

Tempted by the delicious scent of the wild with tenacious commitment to finding rather than losing Self, the freedom we have glimpsed as a result of the understanding that ‘this’ is perfection and therefore there is nothing to seek, becomes Reality. We linger in relaxation, floating, every pore wide open to the experience, nothing here between this and that, all one. My only task to Be. When I wake up in the morning I push aside the usual thoughts that want to drive me through the day and instead listen to the stillness that lies between each thought and stay there. I listen to my heart beat. I listen to the heart beat of others as though it is my own. It is my own.

I touch the sky, I caress the earth, wait for nothing, embrace everything. The heart overflows and is everywhere. The heart is always overflowing. During this full moon when we dive deep we keep on going, falling, rising, spinning in the overflow and infinitely grateful for the good sense to lose our minds. Pisces knows no limitations, no boundaries and succumbs to nothing, merges with everything without fear of no existence, without need to hold onto anything.

Good Monday Morning…Shifting Smoke

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great-swan-h-kopp-delaney Desires hang before me in a column
of pink smoke.
Shifting in the slight breeze,
translucent between
the Great Swan and I.

They undulate amongst
vapid thoughts and rivulets
Of light.
Caught in the opposition
Tossed about by indecision.

Desires, wisps without form,
Without substance.
Slowly swirling out of time,
And the wings flutter
Fanning the flames of my heart.

Good Monday Morning…still here?

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…are you still here?

in this beautiful light that accentuates all of your best qualities?

the only qualities that speak to my heart.

I watch as tears roll down your cheeks and a smile reaches up to the sky.

Wings spread, we fly

and in outstretched hands layers of

human reaction,

mountains appear,

immovable.

Yet time has a way of eroding

everything but the truth.

New Moon August 25, 2014: Stripped to the Bone

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fish carcass for august new moon blogNew Moon August 25, 2014 @ 2 degrees Virgo 19 minutes
05:33 a.m. EDT 02:33 a.m. PDT

In slumber the shadow crosses slowly a desolate landscape. Stunning is the austerity.
One cannot help but be affected by the stillness; the lack of distraction. Where in this dream do I fulfill my desires? The thought goes out a long way but ricochets back to me from distant boulders. Where in this place do I find my desires? I do not find that I want anything and yet I see the landscape unfolding with magnificent curves, sharp edges, soft contours and a horizon that is finally at the end of the limitless sea—perhaps. This I do not know. But ‘it’ goes on. Has nothing to do with what I want. A vulture rises from behind a high outcropping and makes big circles in the sky searching for something that has died, spirals above me. The shadow disappears.

Contributing to a vision that includes only the bare necessities is sharp insight into what serves a higher purpose. Once again the feeling is ‘being stripped to the bone’. The result is feeling raw but it doesn’t take long before a sense of wild freedom replaces vulnerability; freedom from duty and responsibility for anything other than focus upon inner peace, the stillness that we encounter when perched upon a rock in the desert in waning sunlight.

A time to allow intuitive gifts to carry one into deeper levels of expression that demonstrate a commitment to what is beyond thought; being motivated by impulse. The impulse that drives all of us forward no matter how daily life is manifested or what appears upon the big screen. Thus there is freedom to be present and enjoy the moment.

No worry or concern for what should or should not, might or might not be. Only clear insight as to the nature of existence.

The messenger is not an individual alone on a mission to establish truth in the chaos. The messenger is the collective dream that desires to know the Love that we are, the inner peace that is. The message rises repeatedly from whatever is occurring in this moment. The message sings to us, dances about us, lands heavily at our feet, wafts temptingly in our vicinity as it continues to flow in and out of experience that is limited by our sense of physicality. Let go of all belief, become the song, the dance, the air that I breathe and the impulse for home beats with such regularity all else falls away as it changes, moves out of time and disappears. What remains is the true nature.

Stripped to the bone the door flies open and the heart is free to pour forth Love into Love into Love. In the golden light my tiny shadow looms large and then in an instant is gone.

This New Moon stalks me like a cat, the vibration of its silent steps jarring awareness of all that looms about me in the dream. With laser precision I eradicate symbols and images that have long kept me prisoner here. Naturally words dissolve and every belief I have ever had lets go and tumbles out of memory. In the morning we all marvel at this spectacular sun rise.

august new moon 2014 chart

 

 

 

 

Full Moon August 10, 2014

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Full Moon August 10, 2014 @ 18 degrees Aquarius 2 minutes
2:09 p.m. EDT 11:09 a.m. PDT

full moon aug 2014Our true nature is like a precious jewel: although it may be temporarily buried in mud, it remains completely brilliant and unaffected. We simply have to uncover it.—Pema Chondra, Weekly Quotes

The beauty of a Full Moon, its radiance is reflection of our true nature and a reminder of the jewel that we are, a diamond cast down by the hand of God, Love flowing in every direction from every cell an explosion of light from emptiness. This planet, that smiles into eternity with the joy of Being.

This Full Moon in Aquarius, the water-bearer, ruled by Uranus=rolling thunder that precedes change, the electrical charge that moves energy from point to point—from the edge into the unknown for which we have faith and trust of what is to be or simply accept what is as the perfection of the moment.

“Freedom” means to allow ‘what is’ to be.—Robert Wolfe, Abiding In Nondual Awareness

Resistance to what is diminishes as we awaken to the knowing that there is nothing there against which to resist. At the moment this feels like extraordinary grace gently falling upon us like a mist at dawn near a northern lake. We feel, without thought, the presence that is everywhere, always as our self. Our way of moving through the world becomes as a rivulet of “that”, is “that”, peace and stillness and love.

The t-square formed by Saturn at the apex of the Sun/Moon opposition is an opportunity to feel our desire for control as a futile attempt to establish the ego in physical reality. The old patterns that seek security lose their power to move us as we recognize that we cannot hold onto that which never existed–including relationships where someone is perceived to be separate from my self. We have never lost anything. It would be impossible as it is all me, always.

At this time we truly begin to see that our way of thinking we exist, is only a small part of what it means to Be.

A t-square is a highly dynamic aspect that pushes for change, urges one to step out of limitations. And though it may be uncomfortable it is what we most desire. This Full Moon will be a test of allowing.

Allow the ocean waters to flow over you, to shift the sand beneath you, trusting that though you may be carried out to sea you will not be lost but rather may find that the jewel you have so coveted, the pearl upon which you have heaped so much praise is your own heart and as accessible as the blink of an eye; that the beating of the heart responds to the rhythm that pervades all things, is all things.

The Sun, Mercury, Black Moon Lilith conjunction is grace, allows us to move smoothly through this period of what may seem like radical change though nothing really changes except the illusion that I am separate from “that”; that I am this mind/body. Body, mind, spirit—one—no separation.

The other aspect of grace, the sign of Aquarius itself, the water-bearer pouring forth the eternal stream of life, vitality unimpeded by anything. Here there is no notion of attachment as there is the absence of emotional need that otherwise binds an individual to the notion of individuality. Here there is the abidance in the pool of humanity that is the reservoir of “that”, God, Love, Beloved. The heart beat is louder, eventually becomes the only sound I hear.

The Full Moon will have a particular brightness about it. The eye perceives more clearly demands the mind rest and come into the heart of Reality. It is your desire, it is my desire, it is our desire and for that we love each other without condition—in every moment.

The Poetry of Dana Gioia

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(Return to Good Monday Morning July 28th and a post posting of the New Moon which occurs July 26th at 3 degrees Leo. For the Love of…Unfolding into Self Anna travels North.)
The world does not need words. It articulates itself
in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path
are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.
The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being.
The kiss is still fully itself though no words were spoken.And one word transforms it into something less or other—
illicit, chaste, perfunctory, conjugal, covert.
Even calling it a kiss betrays the fluster of hands
glancing the skin or gripping a shoulder, the slow
arching of neck or knee, the silent touching of tongues.
Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot
name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica.
To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper—
metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa
carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember.
The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds,
painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving
each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it.
The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always—
greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon.

 
~Dana Gioia

Good Monday Morning…for the Love of…

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…everything, everywhere

Sheng Zhen Qi Gong (http://shengzhen.org) is the practice of unconditional Love taught by Master Li Junfeng. Recently I have had the good sense to avail my self of his teaching and this gentle and powerful form of movement. During a meditation in a class, I wondered that the Chi was not flowing and present as Master Li indicated it could be. An ancient and wise figure appeared to me that I recognized as Lao Tzu author of I Ching and founder of Taoism.

 

tao_LaoTzu “Chi is everywhere,” he said “where we resist only does it not flow in our body. Be present in the body! Here, now is Chi.”

Imagine the Chi between the cells expanding the cells and allow Love to flow throughout and be one with everything, everywhere. Master Li will return to Santa Barbara mid October to teach us more of his beautiful practice.

 

 

Full Moon July 12th, 2014 in Capricorn

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Full Moon July 12th, 2014 @ 20 degrees Capricorn 03 minutes 07:25 EDT
04:25 PDT

When we look up at the Full Moon this month we see an image upon which we have gazed so many times before with various emotions and thoughts perhaps influenced by the sign that is occupied by our luminous friend. Perhaps by what we feel reflected to us through the light that is our nature—all else will fall away. The structures that we have built for safety and security fall away and the desire for freedom and the subsequent realization of our lack of freedom are plainly evident. The Heart opens and the need for structure is no longer defined.

This all a tremendous experience in Capricorn as the sea-goat has made its way to the mountain top and with lofty view realizes that the structure is like a ladder but as I never needed to climb anywhere, the ladder serves no purpose and what has been learned is now applied to serve the structure that is humanity. I discover my humanity deep within the truth of Be-ing.

No need to whine, worry or wonder you that stand between your suffering and surrender.
You cannot resist and live to tell the story! We’re all going down—but to rise into the light of liberty and joyous community, the structure that exists for eternity. When all else fails, Love prevails.

While we are at it here, might as well feel deeply all that is taking place—the sadness, grief, anger—anger moves us—anger is the energy that takes us from A to B. In sadness we sit. We should deny none of it. All of it is the One.

Capricorn is an earth sign, an opportunity to ground into physicality with the benefit of our vision to Be “that” or Love here—deep, intimate oneness in this body, here, now.

There are several planets shifting signs or direction in the two weeks between this Full Moon and the next New Moon (July 26th). Not a common occurrence. This represents a time of change that allows for deeper feeling. Mercury moves into Cancer on the 12th/13th depending on which coast you live on. Thought and communication originate from a deep place of feeling; less verbal expression. Venus follows into Cancer on the 18th. It is about what we desire that lifts us out of old patterns of want.

On July 16th Jupiter moves into Leo. All of our grand gestures and wisdom are devoted to what feels good. It is not about short term gain or what strokes the ‘ego’ necessarily but what supports our long term well-being. Leo rules the heart. What a heart expansion we are experiencing!

Saturn goes direct! July 20th, for some, is the long awaited date for the task master moving again and therefore not hammering home the same point over and over. We can now get on with what we have discovered while rooting through the cellar in the dark, digging up stuff that has stubbornly evaded scrutiny. Or that has disguised it self as necessary to our survival. And too, we may have been faced with fears based upon some very old thoughts that arise then are seen to be nothing more than the breeze that rustles the leaves. For some this may feel like a strong wind rattling the shutters.

We settle into the comfort of knowing the Self once again in peace and Love. The healing comes easily to us, spreads quickly from the center outward soothing, caressing and nurturing in a way that only Truth can. It has slipped between the resistance and the beliefs from the inside out and shattered all the incongruities that have just never made sense giving rise to numerous, numerous questions that of course have no answer.

Then on July 21st Uranus stations retrograde. What happens when the planet of evolution, change and awakening slows down in Aries (I seek Self)? More internal inquiry. What stands in the way of Liberty? This question may be asked so many times during the course of a lifetime, especially for those determined to get to where they have always been. Abrupt change is very possible and may become ordinary; dropping everything that has always seemed fine in favor of a quest that takes one into the unknown. Instinctively we know this is where our truth lies, beyond the known world.

The will and the way join hands in gracious allegiance. By the 24th as the New Moon approaches and Mars slides into Scorpio we should be filled with insight, many ah, hah moments that bring a smile—further relaxation into our perfection.

There is an intensity to these days that manifests in various physical issues from exhaustion to a disorienting dizziness and feelings of nausea. There are no reminders of what should be, how one should or should not conduct themselves. Instead each individual is called upon to utilize their intuition as to what best serves them. And many things are available to us; many beautiful people are present to show the way if we find our selves in a place where we want to see our own luminous reflection. The doors are open just walk through.

We may begin by gazing at this Full Moon. Being filled with gratitude and nothing else is a moment of Love and joy. And that is all there is.

full moon july 12 2014 chart