The New Moon in Virgo is at 2.13 pm on Monday 25th August 2014. All new moons call for intention setting. In fact, everyday calls for intention setting. Broadly speaking, this particular moon highlights the intimate relationship between our thinking or communication function, and our desire or feeling processes. In a nutshell, this is about the process by which we move through the world, our engagement with self and our relationship to the world, happening through us.
Virgo, ruled by Mercury, takes things a part to put them back together again. Lower Virgo attributes fall into a quest for perfection, while the positive Virgo energy is lifted into synthesis, transformation and wholeness. Through Virgo energy we can transform and heal our lives in a very real and practical way, through integration of all our parts into a unifying whole. This new moon, and the next month, has the potential to bring a lot of detailed awareness of what we do to trip ourselves up.
So to assimilate new consciousness, we first need awareness around what doesn’t work for us. Do we have stewardship of our lives, what guides and leads us on our path? Different systems and paradigms say different things and all are valid routes to transformation, each offers us just part of the whole picture. This Virgo new moon supports a holistic, a subtle coming together of different paths, which includes all the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual facets of growth and transformation.
The reality though, is that to change, we must know what we are doing, otherwise how is change possible? Learning to stop and figure out what we are doing cultivates the ability to observe the process of our own thinking and behaviour. Otherwise we continue our habitual patterns held deep in our old limbic and reptilian brains, in our core soul, within old consciousness.
The idea that we use ourselves, either consciously or unconsciously is a very Virgo-like concept, and that the quality of that use directly affects the quality of our functioning. Everything we do has a bearing on how we move through life. What habitual, inefficient and ineffective ways are using (or abusing) ourselves?
This new moon chart has a Mars conjunct Saturn (exact) in sextile to Mercury and square to Venus. Mars Saturn is about how we focus our energy. Mercury also in Virgo highlights our mental processes, even our left brained processes, and Venus in Leo the aspect of love at its higher level being that of our higher self.
The way we mentally focus and where we place our intention is important. The right intention can change a doing state into a being state. Intentions support our envisaging – they are a means of focusing in on what we want. This focusing function is always turned on; whether we are focusing on different sounds, a body symptom, listening or reading, or smelling our dinner. But again, it’s the quality of this focus, that’s the key.
Often our focusing just happens out of habit (habitual brain, eye and body patterns), without any conscious application. This may mean that we fall into over focusing or under focusing, without having a balance, or rather, a transcendence of these patterns. Focus actually happens in the lower visual cortex of the brain, after light moves through the visual path of our eyes.
Our higher guidance’s home is in a higher region of the brain (its also in the heart too, but that’s another blog post), at the point where we have our hair whorl. Peter Grunwald cites that this region should be ideally responsible for the overall coordination of the brain and visual pathway, which through invoking our presence, functions in such a way that it bypasses the lower limbic and reptilian brains. Bypassing the limbic and reptilian brains could be a good thing. They are, after all, responsible for most of our old fear from a time when the world was a merciless place, when being eaten for breakfast was a possible reality.
Therefore when we function in a way where we get pulled into these old brains, we often remain out of balance, taken over by irrational anxiety that really is not in touch with reality anymore.
There are other ways that we can over inhabit our lower brains. Most ways that we relax and rest consume more energy than conserve. Zoning out in front of the TV consumes a huge amount of energy as at this time we have no awareness of our environment or what we are absorbing – hence little connection with our feelings and/or needs. Over time this sort of doing dulls the overall brain function and nervous system, creating lethargy and apathy.
All of us have a tendency towards over or under focusing at times in our lives, and at the same time, in subtle ways, we do both all the time without even knowing it. For example, think about how you might turn and move your head towards the direction of a friend calling your name. Is it a smooth transition, or a sudden one, where you miss what’s happens in between the moving? Most people hear their name, go into over focus, move their head using under focus, not even aware that they are momentarily losing their presence, only to then over focus again as the head arrives at its destination by over focusing on their friend.
The current Mars Conjunct Saturn could easily create a tendency to over focus, only to then collapse into an under focus. Mars Saturn is the combination of two masculine planets, both of which operate in a goal oriented way. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with goals, they are like our intentions, it’s just how we go about achieving them that matters; the qualities we apply.
Mars Saturn could result in pushing ourselves to extremes – working all night long or criticising yourself to the point that you are then incapable of doing anything anyway. But just as the tendency to over focus invites pressure and stress, it also invites escape. This is the nature of negotiating duality, which at the same time, we are now preparing to transcend
If we were to effectively work with these energies as allies then we might want to spend the day running a marathon, utilising this Mars Saturn quality of endurance that can go the whole distance. The discipline and persistence required to harness this energy can be a challenge though; most people struggle to constructively and consciously integrate the energies of Saturn, perhaps partly down to our rather awkward relationship to the passage of time.
At their lower, consensus reality level, these masculine energies (Saturn and Mars) have a separation quality too, where we exist more in isolation rather than unity consciousness, which means less access to love and suffering from a lack of engagement with the world. His terrain doesn’t have to be lonely; although for most people the enforced loneliness creates the inwardness we need. We need Saturn to fulfil our destiny, in the same way that we need a body if we are to make reality our divine potential. We just need a different way of working with Saturn.
Saturn keeps us connected to our calling and glued to it. Just like our intentions, which keep us focused on our goals. This powerful propelling force is capable of transforming our potentiality into real form, but only if is alchemically internalised. Saturn can make us depressed, but he also grounds our essence, our calling, giving us a real, core inner substance, which unavoidably takes some time.
The more we focus with determination, the more we come from the fear of our lower brains, and then the less likely we will be connecting with the freedom of our higher self. While at the same time, the more we ignore and avoid focusing, the more we are confined to the realm of duality, disconnected from physical reality and our potential being realised. So see where your focusing is focused and make sure it doesn’t imprison you.
Being present is a state of being, from here we don’t do, we just are – moving into our multidimensionality beyond the constraints of time. This includes a conscious, receptive, creative witnessing of ourselves. We don’t need to do anything to be present, it’s simply a choice, through our intent. Through an intimate, constant, connection to our higher self, we don’t react or even respond to the moment, instead it influences our relationship to whatever we are experiencing, allowing us to be receptive to the internal and external, rather than susceptible to it.
Working with this Saturn energy out of a place of presence will bring rewards. In a way, this even moves us beyond current astrological definitions which, when believed, create our reality.
It feels like we are currently straddling two realities. We cognitively see our potential but we are simply not ready to be there yet. It’s a difficult and frustrating place to be in. But have you noticed how the drama outside in the world is forcing you to go more inward? If we follow that, there is no question of harmony and balance. Find your own internal harmony, and then everything outside will harmonise with you, (allowing for the time it takes for physical reality to catch up with the world of essence within). For those that get glimpses of the silence within, only the internal world is real, the outside world synchronises into a reflection of what’s inside us.
For some, it’s perhaps too early to believe that nothing has to be done out in the world, that there’s nothing to fix out there. I put myself in that category too. Stepping entirely inwards to the silence within begins a process that transforms internal reality. Saturn asks us to change our internal landscape first and foremost.
To get us closer to this reality, a big step is to come inside of time, come to the centre within, to our intention of being presence, and then we can literally, take our time. Goodbye over and under focusing.
Saturn is not to be feared if we can let go of our outworn concept of time and understand that true manifestation of our potential is not about forcing and pushing outwardly, but cultivating a persistence and discipline within. If we feel constrained by time and Saturn, its just another excuse for not choosing to be in alignment. In fact, time is created from not being in alignment.
Perhaps in the future, we will stop using certain words, since there will be no time, there will be no moment. Let the no moment, silence and eternity within come to you; let it arise through your intent to be present within yourself. Enjoy this new moon and resolve your intent to be present, and when you are not, just bring yourself back to your intent. Out intention to being present needs a continual, moment to moment, renewal.
