The Challenge of Awakening
By
Sarah Varcas
Underlying the majority of this month, this alignment between Jupiter the planet of buoyant optimism or reckless risk and Neptune the planet of profound unity or deceptive avoidance, highlights important choices. The mounting energy as this month unfolds will challenge us to both act and wait, remain hopeful and know when to let go a treasured dream. We’ve been building up to this month since the solar eclipse in March and how we rode the energies then will influence where we find ourselves now.
September offers new beginnings and an energising boost to plans which align with the natural flow. For those who had to let go once and for all in March, new possibilities begin to take form. We are never abandoned by the universe, just sometimes left in a state of waiting while the elements of our next phase fall into place. The coming together of those elements is happening now, but the overall picture may look somewhat different to what we’d anticipated. Whilst the years of the Uranus/Pluto square (June 2012 – March 2015) were often a very ‘me’ focused time in which many were simply trying to survive one crisis after another, we must now shift into a deeper unity consciousness reflecting our status as part of the whole. The choices we make reverberate throughout the energetic web that connects us all in every dimension – physical, mental, emotional and spiritual – imposing upon us a duty of care to both loved one and stranger alike.
Embracing this responsibility can be a challenge. It’s infinitely easier to think only of what’s going to work for us, neglecting wider ramifications. Likewise there are times when we must simply do what we know to be right, even when the outcome looks less than inviting! There are no clear cut rules and black and white guidelines. We must each step deeply into life and sense its ebb and flow to know what’s required and when, the priorities to honour and those to relinquish. This alliance between Jupiter and Neptune can both help and hinder depending on the level of committed awareness we bring to our every day.
We may be tempted this month to flee from the physical realm, bypassing the visceral awareness of life in the raw to rest our consciousness in the gentler world of spirit, turning from those things which challenge us too deeply. We may resist recognition of ‘unspiritual’ aspects of the self, denying the presence of anger or frustration, disappointment or sadness, bolstering an identity that reflects only those qualities we desire: love, peacefulness, spiritual compassion. We may so yearn for the fruits of spirituality that we adopt them prematurely, acting peace rather than living it, pretending power rather than feeling it. We forget that both light and dark combine to make our world and everything in it, including ourselves. If spirituality becomes just another escape we simply bolster the dualistic perspective that says this is spiritual while that isn’t; that there’s something we must escape to become who we are, when in fact we can never truly separate ourselves from anything! Thus ‘spiritual’ becomes yet another ego-identity, trapping us in a gilded prison of our own making.
This premature flight into spirit is common. The challenges of the spiritual journey can overwhelm at times. But whilst it may be especially tempting to flee from the world this month, it would be unwise to do so. We live in a material realm with physical bodies and all manner of emotions and forces racing through our energy fields. There is no shame in being human with our passions, problems and desires. We are what we are. The path is to be what we are in full awareness. We are raw nature that will fight to the death as much as we are spirit temporarily occupying physical form. As part of the human race we are everyone everywhere. To deny huge parts of our humanity in avoidance of the challenges they present simply shifts their expression onto those who will gladly indulge the ‘darkness’ on our behalf, while we dissociate and see ourselves as better, more ‘civilised’ or aware.
In fact we need awakening people who are prepared to own their anger, feel their rage, to embrace despair and disappointment, for in doing so they carry their part of the collective shadow, dissipating its intensity. During this month of powerful shifts and mounting tension, the more people who can consciously open themselves to all of it and everything – the pain and pleasure of the physical realm, the beauty and challenge of the spiritual – the greater the capacity of the human race to transform its shadow into creative light which can heal the rifts of this world.
Our future rests with those who recognise that awakening is not about becoming special but becoming real; not about leaving this realm but fully arriving in it, perhaps for the very first time. We can join their ranks at any moment by opening our hearts to all that being human entails, to a world in need of healing and to a life which nonetheless weaves its magic all around.
Sarah Varcas
