Knowing Ferocious Love
By
Sarah Varcas
The Moon is full in the 15th degree of Cancer at 4:54 am GMT on 5th January. Forming a Grand Square with a Sun/Pluto conjunction, the North Node and Uranus, this is a highly energised Moon and one with great potential. She supports us to apply ourselves in ways we thought not possible. She imbues the start of the year with powerfully creative energy available for those who need it. A Grand Square demands action and never gives up, no matter what. It endures and sustains through even the very toughest of times. It is ourselves at our most resilient and powerful, self-possessed and fully aware of all that we are: every paradox, contradiction, strength, failing and possibility. This Moon shines down upon us illuminating everything and revealing the process by which creative energy builds as a result of our ability to accept all that we are and step into our lives fully present, ready for what comes next.
Pluto’s current opposition to the Black Sun is exact now, and this potent Full Moon supports us in our quest to know ourselves in all our paradoxical glory: light and dark, peaceful and angry, loving and rejecting, accepting and judgemental, mundane and divine. The tension of paradox fills the air like a gathering storm, electrifying in its action upon our lives. If we use this energy to resist the parts of ourselves and our lives we still struggle to accept, we may find ourselves at the mercy of inner and outer forces too powerful to control. We cannot successfully avoid or deny at times like this. The imperative is simply to accept and own, then draw upon and act. Nothing else will work. In this moment we can draw together everything without guile or judgement, fear or favour, and create something wholly new that we have not allowed expression before. This is the seed of fresh starts and new beginnings, energised by the Moon in her brightest moment and ready for distillation at the coming New Moons, one on 20th January and the next on 18th/19th February.
This Moon invites us to expand our sense of self beyond its usual narrow boundaries, but challenges us to do so in such a way that ego does not become the arbiter of who and what we recognise ourselves to be. There are two ways to expand the self: by inflating the ego or embracing wholeness. The former discriminates and the latter accepts. When left in charge the ego assigns value to our many different aspects. It decides which bits are acceptable, which should be a source of pride, which we should hide or deny. Ego decides who we should be and then moulds us accordingly, like trying to fit a large foot into a very tiny shoe. It hurts, we get bent out of shape and our capacity to move forward becomes severely restricted!
Whilst ego has its place in human life and we may need it to function at a day to day level, allowing it to define our very nature and ascertain our essential worth is simply asking for trouble! It cannot do it because ego places its own survival over and above anything and everything else. Survival to the ego looks like being ‘acceptable’ and ‘doing the right thing’. Or It entails being ‘better than’ some people and aligned with others. Identifying with certain traits and denying those which don’t fit the image. For some ego is about giving other people whatever they want in order to keep them on side. For others ego instructs them to be sure to get their own way at all times for anything else is too much of a threat. Ego creates identity and then spends its entire time bolstering it at whatever cost. We cannot trust it to tell us who we really are, only who it thinks we should be, and ego is a wonderfully accomplished liar in that respect!
The expansion of self at this potent time requires setting ego aside. Give it some toys and leave it to play in the corner for a bit. The grown-ups need some time alone!! This is a moment of profound spiritual maturity in which we can know in every cell, all that we are. This knowing, whilst not an intellectual experience as such, will change our mind as much as it shifts our heart, for it can burn through the barriers we construct to keep us from face to face encounter with those parts of ourselves we would prefer to avoid. These parts have their own thoughts and feelings, perspectives, desires and aspirations, which must be absorbed and incorporated into our sense of self and being. This reconnects them with the energy circuit that animates us through every moment of every day. Whilst we may fear that willingly incorporating our mean and nasty self, our angry and bitter feelings, our jealous and envious side, will subvert our worthiness so profoundly that we will be drawn into the morass of negativity with such force that the light will never find us again, the reality of this process can prove to be very different.
As we recognise the many rejected and suppressed aspects of who we are we can begin to see how they team up with our more ‘acceptable’ self to enhance and energise its expression. In their synthesis energy is released and unleashed power is available to us in our entirety. No matter how loving and accepting we may like to believe ourselves to be, if we cannot love and accept aspects of ourselves we will not be able to love and accept them in others. We will judge them just as harshly as we judge ourselves, condemning anger, rejecting jealousy, pointing the finger at selfishness. Only when we can recognise and own these traits within ourselves can we truly embrace them in another and love with such ferocity that nothing can escape its embrace. Thus we encounter the authentic nature of this force we call love: not ‘nice’ people accepting and supporting each other’s censored version of who they are, but deeply flawed and powerfully paradoxical people, oozing humanity in all its guises and saturated throughout with the divine, embracing all that we are – good and bad, creative and destructive, positive and negative – without guile. This act of radical courage and fierce expression of love is essential to the evolution of consciousness occurring at this time on planet earth.
This resplendent Moon reminds us that truth has many faces and there exists a place for each and every one.
Sarah Varcas
