The Clear Blue Sky Beyond Mind
By
Sarah Varcas
The Quarter Moon occurs at 9:55 am GMT in the 13th degree of Gemini. Occurring one week before a solar eclipse in Virgo, she allows us to reflect on our lives from a holistic perspective, taking into account the many roles we play. This Moon seeks the place of tension at which we struggle to reconcile the diverse aspects of our existence, encouraging us to embrace their contradictions with awareness. Only in doing so, she whispers, can we know ourselves in all our mystifying glory. This Moon assures us we don’t have to make sense or fit nicely into a neat little box of identity. We can be all things to everyone or nothing at all, at once this way and then the opposite.
In Gemini, the Moon wants to connect the dots and understand, but she also wants to keep moving and may skim the surface too lightly to garner deeper truths. On this occasion, however, Pluto holds her to account, demanding more profound reflection. It highlights how the mind can play all kinds of tricks on us, perpetuating perspectives that feel so right to our very bones that we never question their truth. If we tell ourselves we’re this or that often enough, we eventually believe and become it! We may be stuck in just such a trap right now, limiting our choices by seeing ourselves a certain way. Even if it’s an identity we’ve honed for many years, this Moon reminds us we are so much more than the most it can ever be.
Self-belief can be a blessing or a curse. A blessing when we simply believe that we have what it takes to do what must be done, a curse when we believe a self into being which is less than all that we are. Identity is a useful tool in our relational world. We all need one. But it’s only a coat, not our very skin, and the most useful identities are those we can cast aside to reveal the true Self within. Whoever we perceive ourselves to be, no matter our achievements or skills, gifts or strengths – even if we think we’re the most despicable person on the planet worthy of nothing and no one – it is still only a thin perceptual veneer beneath which lies the enormity of spirit.
As we approach this month’s eclipses we must remember that if we think we are something we’re already wrong, whatever it is and no matter how much evidence we can present to support our claim! What we are can’t be thought about or theorised. It can only be lived and known from the inside. Our minds won’t grasp it, nor will beliefs accurately reflect its essence. These words won’t get close and neither can we, as long as we think instead of feel our way into awakening.
In Gemini the Moon is mind-oriented, dealing in facts and ideas. She believes that thinking will answer the biggest questions, but they are vaster than the skies and cannot be entertained by our limited grey matter! Pluto, on the other hand, knows that the mind must reflect and then let itself go beyond thought, into the greater field of being. Allowing even the possibility that this can occur will uplift us at this Moon, raising our energy in readiness for the eclipses to come. We don’t have to believe our every thought or be burdened by limiting beliefs. We can let them go and allow our essence to rise up in their place, empty and spacious, the clear blue sky beyond mind.
What an unusual Moon for a Gemini one! And yet so Geminian anyway: flighty, butterfly-like, uncatchable. Forever in motion she reminds us that nothing need stick in this world, least of all who we believe ourselves to be. She teaches us to live lightly, allowing life to touch us without claiming its shape as our own. In this way we cast out mental shadows with the light of experienced Truth: the unbounded luminescence of Sacred Source, from which our true being is made.
Sarah Varcas
