“Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything.
Between the two my life flows.”
Nisargatta Maharaj
COSMIC CHAOS
Yesterday I was a mess, schleping along with my own little grain of sand like an ant heading for the mound. Today is better. This morning I sat with myself, breathed, picked up my journal and flipped back to the pages where I was on fire and inspired (could it have been only two days ago?). And then it happened like it always does when I get out of my way. I got over myself. I felt connected again, not so dead-center focused on me and my own perceived burdens as I am on you, my brothers and sisters, spiritual beings in human form. Nothing against ants you understand, but gnawing and hauling my own dirt, while necessary, doesn't do a lot to elevate my consciousness. There is more.
The disconnected feeling evaporated as I picked up journal notes from Richard Tarnas and a conference at The Pacifica Institute in Santa Barbara. Soon I was swimming in the true reality of an “enchanted universe” guided by a “profound creative intelligence” of which I – and all of us – are a significant part.
Tarnas is a beautiful man, humble for all his luminary accomplishments. Born in Switzerland, educated at Harvard, he was the Program Director at Esalen for twenty years, now teaches philosophy and psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and his book, The Passion of the Western Mind is widely used in universities. But all of his accomplishements are not what drew me to him...it's his scandalous new book, Cosmos and Psyche. Scandalous because he dares to merge cultural and planetary history with astrology (no longer recognized or taught in universities as a valid science, philosophy or world view). Scandalous to the establishment, yet impelling as he weaves a tapestry of epocal planetary configurations which have clearly influenced history, and just as clearly correlate with edge-state economic, sociopolitical, environmental and human rights pressures which bear in upon us now.
Waves of overlapping celestial influences are flooding the planet with imperative energies. Tarnas gets my attention when he clarifies that we are now under the sway of planetary forces that were in effect during the Renaissance and Reformation. I am riveted to understand that we are at the effect of still other aspects similar to those from 1929-1933. And encouraged to believe that the revolutionary seeding of the-times-they-are-a- changin' Sixties are becoming concrete in our time. We've had enough. We have reached a tipping point. We are a part of the whole and the whole is a part of us. I feel it. I get it. We are the ones we have been waiting for. The time is now.
That's a lot for an ant to digest. But not for a conscious human being when we realize that humanity is at a “newborn moment”. Birth – even rebirth – is never pleasant with all that blood and scat. I'm not a fan of hanging out in the birth canal. Definitely, it's time to push.
Tarnas' words resonate deep: “We all need to orient our lives toward more beauty, towards art, towards relationship and towards interior self-exploration… we need to be listening closely to our own hearts, our own calling to new horizons.” I hear him. Truthiness resonates deep in my bones. The only thing which I, or any of us can do in an insane world, is respond when the still quiet voice speaks within: This is the way. Go… Do your part. Tomorrow I may be wrestling again. But tonight, my heart if full and I remember who I am.
