The second New Moon in January occurs on January 30th 2014 at 9.39 pm in Aquarius. This lunation has some kinder aspects, so we can now integrate any new changes and shifts made earlier this month. Additionally as a Blue, Super new moon, these qualities act to strengthen the overall impact of the new moon and so there is real opportunity for creativity and manifestation. A new moon in Aquarius suggests a need to meet our creativity and look at what interrupts that process.
Aquarius is fixed air and with Aquarius we need to allow our own rigid ideas to be unpacked so we can build new foundational structures of thought that will ultimately shape the future. We all have our own ideas about our identity, this more conscious knowing of who we are is our primary identity – it’s what we are strongly identified with. Becoming more whole requires learning to see beyond our primary identity, and sometimes getting ourselves out of the way.
At the same time, there is a dreaming process that is further away from our idea of who we are, this is called our secondary identity. This is less us, or other, and expresses itself in, for example, incongruent, incomplete body signals or incomplete sentences. You could see this dreaming process as a parallel world, another reality that wants to emerge in you to make you more whole. This secondary identity or dreaming process pushes on our primary identity, especially if we identify ourselves in a fixed form, immovable and rigid. When we do this, we lose all the other possibilities of who we are, the parts we see as not us. We go around saying this is me and this is not me.
The myth of Uranus, ruler of Aquarius, the great Sky God himself, epitomises this experience we have of what’s me and not me. He was conceived and born from Gaia herself, Gaia, the living organism which gives birth to many things, one of which is the mind, the Sky God. Uranus, in his great desire to advance all his ideas, repeatedly impregnates Gaia, his own mother, through his rain. Many children result, none of which Uranus likes, so he exiles them. This doesn’t make Gaia very happy and so as the dividing myth of heaven and earth goes, one of Uranus creations, one of his sons Kronos (otherwise known as Saturn), in alliance with Gaia castrates Uranus throwing his genitals in the sea. From the foam and froth, arose Aphrodite, Goddess of Venus.
This is the conflict we see within Aquarius; we seek to create and form ourselves with our ideas, but as soon as it becomes form, it can prevent us from accessing our creativity and fluidity. We become stuck, stagnant in our identities. Aquarius, with its high idealism and innovative ways can create many ideas that seek form, embodiment. Our systems, structures and paradigms are the greater form of our ideas, which immediately become like Saturn and castrate any further creative energy entering the field. In other words, they become rigid structures and prevent change and creative flow.
This conflict is creative, it gives birth to things, and it represents the archetypal war between the heavenly and earthly realms, and within us. It is for us to unpack this directly within ourselves, our relationships and the world at large. Ironically here, the uniting or creative factor is the Neptunian waters, the Unconditional love which gave birth to Venus. It is through transpersonal love, the water of feelings, that conflicts are healed and become creative, it supports and develops relationships.
If you know an Aquarian, you will know their distinct Aquarian detachment. But it is in fact transpersonal feeling. It signifies the feeling perspective which moves us to tears and allows stuck energy to flow freeing our identities. Without these fluid healing waters, we stay split off from the pain of change, perhaps directing our frustration and judgement onto others, or even chastising ourselves Our wholeness, the fluidity of our parts, is dependent on our ability to move between these parts of ourselves. Sometimes we might need to travel to other realms and layers of energy to access these parts and pick up our wholeness. This energy yields experiences which could feel mythical, archetypical, symbolic, sentient or very personal.
In the outer world, the change we engender doesn’t always bring a better form although forms are constantly giving way to change. With this Aquarius new moon, it might be that we need to accept that our ideas are less than perfect. Aquarius asks us to look at how we can make changes without judgement or blame of our self or others. This is the conflict, tension and pressure that resides within the sign of Aquarius, where the old and new wrestle it out. But without this creative wrestling new life cannot be born. When we see old structures decaying within or without, we forget that it is our attachment to them that creates our suffering. Aquarius reminds us that change is sometimes hard come by, the theory doesn’t always work out in practise and of course we still need Saturn’s realism.
This new moon is about opening up to our inherent creativity and seeing the world differently. The ocean of the quantum world – all the froth and foam, from where Aphrodite was born, gives rise to all things. It is the mother-spring of all creation. And altering consciousness is about joining thought together with awareness – directing it through intention. Intention is known to have an effect at the quantum level, less so the physical realm. Intention is crucial to internal alchemy and giving birth to new ideas is an alchemical process. Our quantum world holds all possibilities, like our night time and visionary dreams. Whereby normal reality is filtered through our channels, senses, beliefs and expectations, with quantum reality there is no objective reality, only a subjective observer. So now think deeply about your version and perception of reality.
In one dimension of reality you have the problem, while in another, you do not, this is why it’s sometimes useful to enter more into other dimensions to resolve problems. As you wrestle with an internal conflict, relationship or body symptom remember it’s already expressing itself in form, and it’s probably also being exiled by your primary identity. As we learn to slide between different realities or parallel worlds, we are participating in one world while the other worlds, rather than collapsing, continue to exist simultaneously. As we choose to focus our intention or attention on one state, we must remember that we simultaneously split off and marginalise all the others – in effect the other parts of our own multiplicity – but they continue to exist in other realms. When we decide we are depressed, we marginalise the possibility that we could be experiencing something else if we were to really explore and examine it. Even to label a state is to marginalise all the other possible options of understanding it. This is how our words create forms by themselves, marginalising and splitting off our wholeness.
So to first enter into these other worlds, be aware of your multidimensional nature – follow the Tao, the flow, the spirit. “Consensus reality… [is] a closed fan that, when spread open, revealed layer upon layer of parallel worlds that were always there, but unseen.” (Amy’s Hyperspaces: Creativity, the Bird of Paradise, and the Doorway to Parallel Worlds). Amy Mindell talks about how the creative process is actually dependent on parallel worlds. That although sometimes we wrestle to access those parallel realities, once we enter into them, we open up to a powerful and creative potential.
Creativity also involves being open to the unexpected, the random and unpredictable (the Leo polarity of Aquarius). Jazz (which symbolises Aquarius perfectly) is an ingenious group creativity where the music is created from each member’s unpredictable response. At times creativity will drive us, flow through us and then sometimes we will need to more consciously tap into it, the divine, creative space, to gain access.
So let me share and illustrate how I slip into and around my own identity. In sessions with my clients, I tend to slip very easily into feelings, I have a strong proprioceptive channel which means I feel client’s body experiences often as they do. I also feel my own subtle small edges in sessions with clients (an ‘edge’ – is the point where my familiar identity ends and where what is not me begins – the entry point into a secondary identity).
When I’m occupying a stronger essence state, I feel in a creative place. My client and me are in the midst of all possibility, in a very quantum state, creating moment to moment. This space is where that spark of an idea turns into form and gets expressed. But here it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish between channels of experience (whether I’m in a visual, auditory or proprioceptive channel for instance). Its challenging when feeling so immersed in the quantum field to isolate and define exactly what your experience really is, and so, quite frequently, I find the words slip out of my mouth, and they are right for the occasion.
So ideas and words find me. Perhaps others experience this, some would call it channelling – but that word sweeps over the complexity of the experience because we have no other way of talking about it. Why would this be a problem? Well as I am not finding the words, this means words and ideas are at times more secondary for me, further away from my identity; the process of finding the words is something with which I am less identified. I am, of course, identified with being a shaman in that moment, a healer, a conduit for spirit – my primary identity and where I can get stuck.
So in that moment just before those words come out without a clear thinking process, if I really trusted myself to examine myself, I might find that I feel slightly insecure, a counterbalance to the trust I feel in my body to go forward and open up my mouth and release the words. I could even observe how I override myself, the subtle insecurity, and trust myself to open my mouth and let the words find me.
By ignoring the fear signal, I am not seeing my secondary process, and the secondary process is the gateway to my wholeness, it’s the entry into a parallel world. Knowing more about my words will lead to more wholeness. So my learning is to notice the subtle fear and pay attention to how I formulate my ideas and thinking, developing a stronger attitude to logic, thinking and expression.
The first helpful attitude that I adopted to follow myself was acknowledging that there are things that I don’t know about myself. If I thought I knew myself fully, I wouldn’t be able to be open to new discoveries. So I follow the Tao as it moves closely, like a hunter with my awareness, moment to moment, to see what I can discover. I occupy the unknown, as a shaman does, and I choose to not decide reality but let the reality decide itself as I go along.
To take this one step further and illustrate how the critic might work in this process. For me the creation in me comes from the words, rather than me being the creation. As we know, in the beginning of creation was the word. I often think to myself, “if only I could find the words (rather than the words find me), then people will listen”. This inner critic might bug me, but with exploration I understand that I see myself far away from my own creations. I split from my own creations. I believe that if only I could have the right words, I would be ok. I do not fully believe that I have the words.
My primary identity – that “people don’t listen to me” creates suffering, as I believe that I never get what I want. But it will never quite satisfy me for people to listen to me, as it’s me that needs to listen to me. So then what stops me listening to myself? Well perhaps I am not deeply enough in myself, so I can’t listen to myself. Or perhaps I judge my own words, I judge what comes from me.
Here we come full circle, and like Uranus, my own creations are rejected as not me, the other, and exiled. We all do this all the time. For me there’s a part that believes I’m never going to be perfect but yet tells me to be perfect, and there’s another paradoxical part that tells me to rebel against being perfect! When caught between these parts fighting something out, you get conflict and yet also creativity. Incidentally, this is why astrological squares in a chart create awareness in an individual, this is why tension creates critics, trouble and suffering, but also yields depth, complexity and understanding.
Immersing and wrestling with our edges, inner conflict and critics are powerful divine processes that invite wholeness. Real creativity is about following the Tao into the unknown parallel worlds, being a warrior with yourself, facing yourself; I see it as my responsibility to know myself. Aquarius knows all about wrestling with the contradictory, it’s paradoxical by nature. Entering into a real awareness of your parts, will show you how amazing life can be and will teach you how to trust it. It’s never easy, sometimes you wish it was over, but it does make the journey wonderful.
For more information on parallel worlds – see Arnold Mindell’s website http://www.aamindell.net/
