New Moon in Aries, March 24, 2020: NEW BEGINNING?

And if so, what kind of new beginning?

What strikes me more than anything during this unprecedented hiatus is, thanks to the constant trauma programming of mainstream media,  the sense of being continuously overwhelmed on a psychic level by oceanic currents of F.E.A.R. (False Evidence Appearing Real), including overtones of panic, desperation, sorrow and despair.

Note: For any of us to think that we are insulated from this world-wide Neptune in Pisces inundation is either kidding themselves or downright delusional.

It turns out that, despite our devices and our chest-thumping insistence on individual freedom, none of us lives in a bubble. Up until this strange and powerful Saturn/Pluto turning point in time, as a species we saw ourselves as becoming  more and more isolated, lonely as hell, thanks to our technology, and formalized during this strange time by “social distancing.”

Then came the moment when everything we were used to, all that we took for granted, stopped. Huh? How could that be? It took us a few days to act cavalier with the fact that important events of all kinds were cancelled, one after another. No graduation this year? Oh well! That conference I had bought tickets and a plane fare gone? Oh well. My job? Huh? Gone. Done. My small business? Will it be able to open up afterwards? Or will there be any afterwards. What has just happened?!? The world has just changed, irrevocably; and the longer the pause goes on, the more this undeniable, many-layered fact sinks in. Our uneasiness grows; our imaginations run wild. What will happen to me, to my kids, my parents, my friends? Has my retirement disappeared? Will I lose the house? Will my landlord kick me out? And, of course, will I “get” the coronavirus/Covid-19?

But these questions (different, and yet similar for each person) exist on the surface level.  Deeper down, underneath, in the mysterious underworld atmosphere known as the “collective unconscious,” we are now, second by second, severely challenged to center ourselves with every breath, every heartbeat, so as not to be sucked into the prevailing FEAR. It’s not easy. It’s not simple. None of us have ever been here before. We actually did not realize that above and beyond our lives as increasingly lonely beings, we are all sharing a momentous discovery of unity; that together we are embarked on a perilous, storm-tossed voyage into the great unknown.

Nothing is as it was.

Nothing is as it seems.

Nothing is as it will be.

All is in flux.

The human constructed Saturn structures (visible and invisible) that we have built over vast periods of time to dam up and feed off of the primal power of the Plutonian life force, are dissolving. The intense polarization of which we are so familiar is — just like that! — fracturing into untold numbers of seemingly disconnected parts. Who is who? What is happening and why? Who benefits? Who loses? What to believe? How can we even begin to move consciously in a certain direction when we know not where we are standing?

TONGLEN

If you have nEver practiced “tonglen,” I suggest you begin to do so now. Like any breathing practice, it is a meditation that can help to center the self. But this particular breathing practice is, I feel, specifically, even uniquely, valuable during this crazy, crashing, epochal turnover in human history.

I had never heard of tonglen, but, on the first sleepless night after 9/11, so disturbed did I sense the invisible atmosphere in which I was enveloped, that I found myself automatically doing this powerful breathing practice in bed, and continued it every night, for weeks.

Later, I learned that this breathing technique is Buddhist, and goes under the name, “tonglen.”

This practice consists of consciously breathing into one’s heart all the fear; then, in that mysterious zero point space between inhale and exhale, circulate the inhaled FEAR energy, transmute it into LOVE; breathing that Love out, to shower the whole suffering world in its healing balm.

From Fear to Love, utilizing the heart’s powerful circulation, over and over again. As Joan Halifax noted,

NEW MOON IN ARIES

Early this morning, we experienced a fiery new beginning, when the Moon joined the Sun in early Aries.

Notice that this New Moon in Aries is nearly exactly  conjunct Chiron, which signifies both the wound and the healing of the wound (thus it’s called “the wounded healer:” only those who have been wounded themselves can become healers of self and others) and Lilith, the divinely creative transformative feminine force. Both. Both Chiron and Lilith conjunct Sun and Moon.

Four heavenly bodies in fiery conjunction. Will we pick up down here Below on this new impulse in the heavens Above?

Meanwhile, remember the powerful four-planet energy that has been operating in the background: Jupiter/Pluto/Mars/Saturn.

Yesterday, 3/23/20, Saturn moved into Aquarius for the first time in 29.5 years. It will remain there for only three months before it backs up into Capricorn again — until December, when both Jupiter and Saturn both move into 0° Aquarius within two days of each other, and then conjunct exactly at the Winter Solstice on December 21.

Divine timing at work?

I suggest that the palpable sense of either a new invigoration of “decentralizing experimentation” and/or a newly ramped up “centralizing technocratic takeover” will not become visible until the energizing entrance of Mars into Aquarius, where it will join Saturn, on March 31-April 1. April Fool’s Day. And I have a sense this is the time when President Trump might have announced earlier that we can now “go back to work” and hopefully, small businesses in America will have been saved from oblivion. And if we do begin to mingle again in the public arena, all will have changed; something brand new will have been born within us as a species: A joyful realization of our unity.

But this scenario gets even better! For a few days later, on July 4-5, Jupiter and Pluto will conjunct each other exactly, for the first time in 13 years, thus swelling whatever new beginnings to a full roar. But what kind of unity will we go on to create with new Saturn structures to channel the primal life force?  The choice between humanizing de-centralization (permaculture) and de-humanizing centralization (globalism) will be battling it out until Pluto itself moves into Aquarius, and stays there, for nearly two decades: 2025 to 2043.

Let us remember: So we became all one in our FEAR, so we can become all one in our LOVE.

Meanwhile, the more of us who practice tonglen, the greater the opportunity for transformation. The more we direct our attention to igniting the joyful creation of a brand new decentralized, interconnected world, the more we will be able to say, both to our ancestors and to our grandchildren, that we, those who are alive NOW, and choosing to reconnect with both each other and our  beautiful mother Earth NOW, did it. That the tipping point was reached, and we successfully crossed the great divide.