11 Mar Blowin’ in the Wind: a Meditation to Heal Division
Today marks the official one year anniversary of the lockdowns stateside.
If there’s one word I hear over and over that people use to describe the past year, it’s division.
Everyone seems to be more divided from each other more than ever.
Whether it’s based on race, gender, politics or economics, it feels like the causes for division are multiplying exponentially.
On top of that, the mere fact that we have largely spent a year divided from one another’s company, unable to hug our loved ones and see their smile without a three second delay on a computer screen.
This didn’t happen in a vacuum, though…
As you learned from yesterday’s post, the universe operates on a few subtle but key principles.
One of these is as above/so below. The other is as within/so without.
The latter is the basis for that famous Gandhi quote, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
So when you look at the state of division that the world is in, it becomes abundantly clear that, while it would be great to blame it on a public figure or socioeconomic system, it started somewhere within…
…and we have to take responsibility for it.
It’s true that the miasma of the modern world has divided body from mind, soul from spirit, value from labor—but looking to that world for solutions is only going to cause more problems.
The more you look without, the more you divide yourself within.
That’s why the fight for peace, justice and equality will only bring more violence, oppression and division.
A momentous astrological transit took place last year.
The Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Aquarius triggered a 200-year long cycle of the two giants meeting in the air sign triplicity.
Jupiter and Saturn conjunct every 20 years. This transit is known as a Great Conjunction, and provides a generational framework for the dance between above and below. For 200 years, the Great Conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn will happen exclusively in air signs.
Look at it this way: if Jupiter & Saturn were Vegas performers, then the air signs have them under contract to only perform together at their resorts for the next 200 years.
A lot can happen in 200 years.
Alchemical operations of air are categorized as sifting and separation.
In practical alchemy, that means separating remaining material from that which dissolved during dissolution—but in spiritual alchemy, it means separating the ego from the Higher Self. This is typically done through some sort of withdrawal from the world, through meditation or retreat.
Getting stuck in the stage of separation can feel exhilarating but results in the opposite of deconditioning the ego: you know the truth about everything and have a plan to save the world—and you’re on a mission to fight all the lies you see everywhere, willing to burn it all down to prove your point.
It doesn’t matter if you are abuser or victim, oppressor or oppressed, privileged or targeted. When the fury of separation overwhelms you, you’re like a tornado ripping apart the very fabric of reality.
Like I said, a lot can happen in 200 years, which is how long Jupiter and Saturn are headlining in air signs.
Will we spend it spinning our wheels, with every person on Earth a whirlwind unto themselves, tearing down every last institution in the known world?
Or are we going to breathe through it, check the ego and let cooler heads prevail?
Try this.
The mind is powerful tool. Its purpose is to divide & conquer—to constantly separate truth from falsehood on its conquest to name and annotate the phenomenal world. But when it is untrained, it will eventually divide the spirit from the soul and the human from the divine. This is how we end up in a world of sociopolitical strife, ruled by dogmatic materialism.
But when properly trained, the mind can be a great tool for Self-Inquiry, for separating the ego from the Higher Self. The great spiritual teacher Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi gave his pupils a set of 30 questions to ask themselves to initiate them into Self-Inquiry.
The first of these is arguably the most important.
Who am I?
Sit in meditation and ask yourself over and over Who am I?
Realize that you are not your body…
…nor are you your senses…
…nor are you your mind…
…nor are you your opinions, knowledge, experience and so on.
After refuting all of the manifestations of identity, you are left with the question: If I am none of these, then who am I?
All that remains is Awareness—the Great I Am.
As you cultivate Awareness, the separation of human and divine vanishes.
This is the work of true separation.
It’s not the division of society into detailed categories of victim and abuser according to cutting edge advancements in postmodern critical theory.
Nor is it the division of spirit from matter in the pursuit of scientific knowledge and technological progress.
It’s the separation of the subtle from the gross—of wisdom from desire, knowledge from power, and Self from ego.
This is the true separation that the world needs now.
And… you know… love sweet love.
If you’re still pickin’ up what I’m puttin’ down in these posts, then you are going to absolutely *love* my transformational alchemy course SPIRITUALIZED.
You’ll use exercises like this and much, much more to initiate your own spiritual transformation and the discover the Philosopher’s Stone.
Registration opens Monday, March 15, 2021.
I can’t wait for you to join.
Space will be limited.
Stay tuned.