This is a guest post by Esther Frances.
Malidoma Patrice Some, author and teacher of African indigenous wisdom, has often indicated that the woes of modern life are due in part to the overemphasis on the masculine elements of fire and air. We have ignored and often sacrificed the qualities of the feminine elements of water and earth. Healing comes from addressing our bias and seeing how it has endangered the well being of all life on the planet.
Wouldn’t it be great if this rare configuration, signifying harmony and integration of the water and earth elements could shift us into a new process where we respect, honor and integrate the feminine elements?
The entire planet has been handicapped in our desire for peace because as my late mentor, Thomas Berry said, “We are talking only to ourselves. We are not talking to the rivers, we are not listening to the wind and stars. We have broken the great conversation. By breaking that conversation we have shattered the universe. All the disasters that are happening now are a consequence of that spiritual ‘autism.’”
The obsession with speed, competition, war, intellect divorced from feelings, logic devoid of wisdom, goals forgetting the journey, frantic activities and frivolous games have filled our attention while our Earth is burning, our rivers and oceans becoming toxic waste disposals and our soil and food becoming poisoned.
Lack of respect for water and earth has been a reflection of our collective lack of respect for the feminine, as Mother Earth and as every female embodiment of Her. The inability to feel and cry has severed a great deal of men from their internal female and allowed them to create suffering through their lack of sensitivity often leading to brutality.
Both men and women haven’t been taught how to use their feelings as a navigational guide to know what hurts and harms and what nourishes and heals.
We as a collective humanity have not learned how to integrate our feelings and to regard our bodies and physical / biological / matter as sacred. We’ve projected spirituality into the sky realms and leached the living of its sacred sap in doing so. Now is the time we can make amends by mending our separation—our internal divides that then become projected out onto the holographic movie screens of our lives where they reflect back to us our disfunction and sorrow.
It is said that healing can only occur when we acknowledge the wounds that we carry and face the shadows we’ve been denying. I’m thinking we are weary enough to say “Wait a minute,” and stop running. Dare we have the courage to look and listen to what our wounds have to tell us and teach us? We need each other in this process and we need to release the old blame and shame that obstructs compassionate healing.
Men and women often don’t acknowledge their feelings until, from enough repression, they erupt and explode. So much pain could be avoided when we learn to allow our shadow selves a voice. All the feelings and needs that we have judged bad or wrong need to be acknowledged so they don’t become terrorists that rob us of our dreams and peace.
Non-violent education is a step in the right direction to teach us how to express our needs so they can be met and fulfilled without resorting to extreme measures that often harm. Nature is calling us back to reconnect and become whole again. Once we become conscious or our unconscious beliefs and fears they no longer have the same power over us.
How many little boys have been shamed by their male elders when they shed tears? The harsh climate of hurt in the world is largely a result of the repression of both emotion (water). Boys are humiliated for feeling sadness as girls are reprimanded for feeling angry. Banished to the basement and sealed off from awareness these exiled parts of ourselves take a huge toll when they rise up and overthrow the conscious egoic mind!
When the element earth is repressed sex becomes a commodity, and is used to sell commodities. Rape and sex-based exploitation could not exist in a touch fulfilled culture. Touch is essential to our well-being. Our senses need to smell flowers and earth, to touch mud and walk barefoot. Kids are growing up in sterile, artificial environments not knowing the caress of the wind and the joy of climbing trees.
These comments are a prelude as to why this configuration potentially can be so significant. We need to transform our relationship to Mother Earth, our bodies, our feelings and our Souls. The astrology of July 29th affords us an opportunity for a realignment of our priorities.
We can see also the configuration as a 3D star tetrahedron, combining two tetrahedrons, representing the primal union of yin and yang, masculine and feminine as cosmic partners. Whether we take a one or multi-dimensional look, we have a rich combination of trines=stability, sextiles=opportunity, oppositions=awareness, and squares=change, to create a dynamo of a day.
It is time to heal the split between us all: We are all of it—the fire, the air, the earth, the water and the space containing and interpenetrating it all. We need a new dynamic that heals the split between the light and the dark, the male and the female, and all the false divisions that create the illusion of superior and inferior.
Equality does not mean sameness. Equality respects our differences without the blindfolded, bias-based judgment that elevates parts of us while simultaneously deflating another vital part. Harmony implies many voices. Peace is not static, equality not a fixed proportion but a respect and reverence for the whole, w-holiness that we are.
We can choose to embrace the unexpected magic and energy of the day by paying attention to those places within us and in our own lives that may be calling for greater integration and new ways of being.
Transformation is in the keynote and we are the keys.
© Esther Frances
