This is the third post commenting on the entrance of Neptune in Pisces, a momentous occasion that, until August 2011, previews what will begin in earnest, in February 2012, and continue for 14 years. See this and this for the first two posts.
For the past three years, I’ve shared my life with a little coton de tulear dog, Emma, and it’s taken almost this long for her to gentle herself enough to lie down with Paoli, our still hesitant kitty. Emma, whose full name — Emma Joy Princess, Guardian of the Present Moment — is very apt, has been teaching me to enter that expansive space where we really do live, if only we could wake up to it, and then — even harder! — hold the awareness of oneness, all day long.
Emma and I specialize in walks around the Indiana University campus. Her job is to dance along happily; mine, to seek the eyes of students and smile. Together, we make quite a team, and consider our daily walks a sort of ministry.
Each morning, when we open the door and proceed onto the streets of Bloomington, Indiana, we say to each other, We are sooooo lucky! This is the best day ever! Once in a while, a student will actually look down at Emma’s antics and smile; more rarely, one will meet my eyes and, tentatively, shyly (“Wow, does she really mean it?”), smile — and even light up! These moments of shared joy are both fleeting and precious.
Yesterday, when powerful, mystical, mysterious Neptune started to slip its subtle self into its home sign Pisces for the first time since 1848, Emma and I were out walking as usual. We came to the intersection of Union and 7th Streets, where IU students stand to catch the campus bus. This day there were around ten of them, all standing alone, and looking unusually lonely, downcast and glum. Kind of paralyzed, really. No ipods or cell phones, even. Just standing there, staring into the void.
How many people, world-wide, during those rare moments when we are not hooked up to some kind of technology, when we are not temporarily distracted by technological or other addictions, don’t look paralyzed? It’s as if we are all deer caught in the headlights of the ongoing slow- and fast-motion destruction of the horrifically polluting world we’ve been building for the past 300 years.
So that’s the general atmosphere that we’re all soaking up and contributing to as we go about our lives. Remember that word, “atmosphere,” one of the keynotes for Neptune, the planet that dissolves boundaries.
Okay, so there we were, Emma and I, crossing the street, moving towards these students as usual on a particularly glum day, when, all of a sudden, without thought or intent, I said, very loud, “HEY KIDS! WAKE UP! IT’S A GOOD DAY!”
And do you know what? They all did! All of them! The frequency of my spontaneous, sudden happy shout struck like lightning. Their frozen bodies started to move, their faces started to crack open and their eyes and mouths grin. And of course, Emma, who is so finely attuned to atmospheres, wriggled her way up to each in turn, licking their hands, jumping up, tail wagging. HAPPY! We were all happy, all of us, and we were all connected. For that brief and shining moment we shifted the atmosphere into something wondrous and strange.
Without thinking, with my voice I had used the lightning strike of Uranus in Aries (magnified by its cohorts Jupiter and Mercury and Sun, all still in Aries), to propel us from one Neptunian atmosphere into another, equally strong. In the space of a mere seconds, we transported ourselves out of one energetic field and into another. From feeling separated and glum, we suddenly allowed ourselves to feel our inherent unity, a community sharing the beauty and wonder of aliveness. And though the moment passed, I imagine its tendrils trailed us throughout the day, reminding us of the light shining in this darkness. Reminding us of our humanity, our connection to the brilliant luminosity and kind sweetness of all that is.
Different atmospheres, or energetic fields, though we cannot see them, hold very different sets of possibilities.
Both these energetic fields are present in the world today. There is the one of decay and corruption that we are exposing to the vastly increasing light; and there is the one of resurgent life that is being nourished by that same light. In only one of these fields does the lion lie down with the lamb. In only one of them can we relax enough to reinhabit our essential gentleness.
Which do we choose? It’s up to us. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
