Astrological Overview:
Tuesday, September 22nd is officially the northern hemispheres’s Fall Equinox and our entry into Libra season. Equinox is a time for balancing not only with light and darkness but within all paradox in our world today. It is certainly easy to witness the stark polarities with our weather (fires in the west and hurricanes in the south) and our politics. Libra invites us to open our minds to listen for new perspectives that may lend themselves toward greater equanimity for all. Libra season starts with Mars in retrograde asking us to recheck our motivations and actions to ensure they align with our evolving selves and our evolving environments. Soon, Mercury will go retrograde as well asking us again dive into the thoughts and plans that bind us towards that which is now untrue. Clearly, we have somethings to contemplate and discern with fresh perspective. With Libra there is always “2” sides to a story and so this time urges us to be able to hold both as true and to seek ways to build bridges rather than fences. Instead of right and wrong, where we seek to isolate and repel the other, can our truth hold a greater capacity to consider new edges and angles that unify and draw us closer?
Venus is the ruler of Libra and so the way of the heart, peace and love is a powerful choice for bringing forward the change we all seek. The heart is not concerned with winning or losing but of the quality of the exchange and impact. I know I have “won” many battles that in the end cost me my inner peace, so did I win? If truly we want a world to be able to hold more love for all beings black, white, brown, and all colors and to live harmoniously together then it will take the commitment and dedication of each of us in doing our own work of looking inward to rectify the paradoxes that may exist within ourselves. With Libra we get many mirrors in the form of others views in which to open our eyes to see what we we may not have been willing to see on our own. The more we open ourselves to truly listen to the other with the desire to learn, the more we may learn about ourselves and the other person and thus finding common ground and balance within and throughout.
Nature is always my most powerful teacher. As we watch our Earth balancing itself out through the elemental forces of transformation (fires, floods, wind storms) we see that balance is often a dynamic process of mediating the extremes with awareness and skillfulness. Nature can be a place for us to listen for what the earth needs to relay to us. Our earth needs us to join together for her healing and thus we must be willing to listen to the trees, the waters and the land for their voice.
So many indigenous people have said to me that the fundamental
difference between Western and indigenous ways of being is that even the
most open-minded westerners generally view listening to the natural
world as a metaphor, as opposed to the way the world really is. Trees and
rocks and rivers really do have things to say to us.
—Derrick Jensen
May we all develop that skillfulness through the practices of yoga or any other means so that we can mediate with the polarities of life with an inner tranquility and peace that allows for co-creative change for the benefit of all beings. We have some work to do to and it may behoove us to listen carefully to the perspectives of those that are going to partner to do the work with us.
