Ceremony
THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE (YOU AS A SOUL).
Understanding the Self on the level of the Soul is a full embodiment of our truth in any given moment. The source of truth always being, whatever is unfolding deep within the heart. We have been raised in a time where the perceptual, logical mind is placed at the top of the hierarchy of the validation of information, and the silent wisdom of the body and heart are drowned out. As children we just are, and we don’t apologise for it. We have a natural connection to the heart space, to our feelings. Western societal norms scream of not being able to deal with any feeling that is big and overwhelming.
Parents are meant to be our safe place to bring our explosive feelings to. Everything we are feeling is real and true, we are just needing some nervous system regulation so that we can move forward with our heart remaining open and to learn how to be whole and healthy in our relationships.
We can only be with the intensity in others to the capacity that we can be with the intensity in ourselves. For many, parents lacked the emotional grounding to stand upon to hold the unconditional space for feelings to surface. This is a patterning that we carry within ourselves through our ancestral lines and often the tools were not passed to our parents either. And so the false narrative that we pick up on through our felt sense, our embodiment and within our intuition, goes a little something like this:
‘The world is not a safe place for me to simply feel what I feel, love what I love, and be who I am in all of my colours. I am too much, or too little.’ Here, coping mechanisms that go against the flow of life begin. The river is simply flowing. The rains are simply falling. The storm is simply happening. The Sun is simply shining. And we are constantly in attachment or aversion, going against the present moment, what is and therefore where and what we are.
When we know our emotional and Soul edges, we can trust in what we feel, and tell the truth in love no matter what. This is a very new concept to grasp, and is still a very courageous unknown path to tread. With the integration of the concepts Evolutionary Astrology offers, we can come to know that the falling apart or away of anything–the letting go–is beautiful. Because it’s real, especially when we allow ourselves to go there and feel what we feel. The tears that come are tears that can move us back to our true place.
Why do we hold on as human beings? Why do we resist the ending or the letting go? Pantajali, thought founder of Yoga as we know it, writes in the Yoga Sutras verse 2.9 that all fear stems from the fear of Death. Not only a physical death but the ending of all things.
Jeffery Wolf Green writes that evolution is always preceded by a natural law called involution. Meaning the letting go phase, the shedding and destruction must happen–of pre-existing roles, structures, energy patterning, and any old dynamic–for the authentic evolution of the Soul to occur.
The letting go of needing to know, anything at all, is a courageous first step. To understand the manifestation of anything, the qualities of the ‘personality,’ one must utilise the brilliance of the mind. We do this best as human beings through the utilisation of archetypes, symbols and stories that all point in the direction of the Soul. Stories and narratives are how we traditionally come together with each other to return to the things in our heart to share, heal, learn and move through into the next phase, together. Evolutionary Astrology functions in this way, of using archetypes and stories as a starting and returning place. When we zoom out further we can then realise what it points us toward in a felt sense.
Any intensity, sharp edge, or shadow manifestation is simply truth bubbling up to the surface, normally in an unacknowledged way. These are the signposts that show us where a letting go process may need to happen for our highest evolution. This is also how we can use story and build narratives that perpetuate suffering through attaching experiences that have not been truthful to our deepest evolution to who we are as an identification.
As we grow up, we start to take on the unprocessed feelings of the world through our parents, communities and immediate emotional experiences and mistake it for our own Soul essence. The purpose of the shadow is so that we can have a felt sense of what is not in integrity with us at any given moment at the highest level, of what is not sitting right. We can then catch the narrative behind the shadow manifestation of the archetype and feel it for what it is, and thank it for the pathway it presented us to come back to our true place. We must feel the opposite to know what our edge of capacity is. To know what is what, and what sits where. To know what is ours from our own Soul essence vibration, and what is the ‘Others’–the vibration emanating from the outside. This is the paradoxical beauty of the universe and of true embodiment.
When we do not know how to accept or hold space for these sharper edges of ourselves, we have simply closed our eyes or turned away–therefore also turning away from our highest evolution. It hasn’t actually gone anywhere, we just don’t want to know or see it. We then tend to layer it more through creating unbeneficial stories about any emotion that bears a shaper edge than culturally acceptable. We often do not realise that sharp edges pierce us into powerful new places, through acceptance of what is and in deep listening to what these ‘darker’ qualities and feelings are telling us.
“The shadow is neither within nor without’ - Thomas Cleary, Secrets of the Golden Flower.
Lightwork is shadow work. As within, so without.
If you understand nothing else, understand that everything that happens inside of you can be felt, seen and understood within the universe. All understanding starts within you. This is cosmic, magic and perfect. Of course it goes both ways, but discovering the true nature despite and within changing forms is a starting place.
