For decades now, I have been working to integrate and balance the various and diverse aspects of my own internal zoo that, if left alone, tend to compete, rather than cooperate. Long ago I discovered that what is is required is that the larger impersonal “I” (or “witness”) remain continuously aware of, and balancing, all sorts of “me”s that act as if each other either does not exist or should be ignored or wiped out.

Sound like today’s world? It is. The cacophony inside me IS the outside world “writ small” (or, seen from the other side, the outside world IS me, “writ large”). The point is, we need to practice waking up to continuous awareness of internal/external, inside/outside at once, simultaneously. And to do that we must center deep within, and then, like a standing wave lightning bolt, we both dig below into the holy ground beneath our feet as well as open our questing minds to the infinite cosmos above, and . . . and it’s the “and” that’s important here, while keeping our lightning bolt verticality above and below, let us learn to hold and feel our center of gravity in the opening heart, which radiates gently, equally and horizontally in all directions. So, you might say, in this strange, polarized third dimension we are each of us crucified, hung on a cross: the vertical arm is Wisdom, the horizontal arm is Love. Their intersection denotes the Love/Wisdom center of awareness that, the deeper and higher it reaches, the wider it expands. Both/and. Simultaneous. Always, integration of polarities on every level no matter the complexity.

With this dizzying introduction, let me now begin to hone in on an incredibly fine article by astr0loger Eric Francis, about the current, and extremely rare, transiting conjunction between two planets, Eris (1977) and Uranus in Aries. The last time these two planets conjuncted was in 1927-1928, also in Aries. Which means that since then Uranus has spun its entire 84 year cycle again, and come back to it’s conjunction with Eris, now just a bit farther along in Aries. How is that? Well, Eris just so happens to have a 560 year cycle! Everybody, I mean everybody, now living on planet Earth, was born with the signature of Eris (known as the “Goddess of Discord”) in the sign of Aries (new beginnings, initiation).

We’re all here for the big kahuna! We all chose to BE HERE NOW!

So, are we looking for “Order out of Chaos”? That’s what the Bilderbergers, now meeting in Dresden, Germany, would like. But whose order? And not so fast. Yes, let’s do look at Eric Francis, his provocative articulation of what might called the phenomenology of, not just this extremely weird presidential campaign circus, but the entire current global internet “noosphere” (Teillard de Chardin’s prescient word), which has split us even further from our bodies than Descartes did (remember him, his famous dictum: “I think. Therefore I am”?), so that each of us, isolated physically but “connected” virtually through screens, ends up utterly ungrounded, floating in the ethers, splitting into zillions of parts that whirl continuously adrift with no direction known.

Uranus-Eris: Of God, Country and Internet

Of course I, too, suffer, thanks to the internet, from this strange new whirling malady of disconnected, disembodied fractured selves, which is why I realize I must spend an equal amount of time and energy on the ground, in the garden, walking my dog, doing tai chi preferably barefoot outside, paying attention to inner bodily and emotional states, napping, cleaning house, fixing and eating nourishing food, and so on.

Only as I do these quotidian tasks, only as I stop and smell the roses, do I move back into balance, daily, hourly, minute-by-minute. And especially, there is simply no substitute for my communion with the living Earth, if I wish to remain sane.

All of which gives me a great excuse to show more photos of the Green Acres Urban Farm garden, taken yesterday evening by Brie, with her beautiful eye and camera, while Rebecca and I were out there “weeding” — Rebecca instructing me on which “weeds” could stay (because insects like them, usually, or they bring up minerals), and which need to go (e.g., all vines, crab grass, other grasses, thistles). I was working on the blackberry patch, which is loaded this year. Can’t wait for the ripening.

Brie posted the entire series on fb, the Green Acres Neighborhood Garden page.