This week we move into week 11 of the course. Last week was all about accountability and taking a stand. The main task of last week was to articulate our stand in life. This is something you are willing to stand up and be made accountable for in the world. It is your stamp of difference and the difference that you make in the world.
Week 11 carries the energy of of the zodiac sign Aquarius, the planets Uranus and Saturn, and astrological 11th house. So the themes of this week constellate around serving community, recognising our inevitable participation within community grouping, and our inclusionality within something that is large than ourselves. Aquarius holds the tension of sameness and difference. On the one hand, Aquarius (being the opposite of Leo) symbolises group consciousness and as such it appears to transcend personal differences. Yet at the same time, it is a sign that celebrates difference, and represents the experience of standing out from the crowd, being out of step with the mainstream, liberated to a certain extent from the addictions of human feelings.
So what can glean from this? Well, the shadow side of Aqaurius is bland sameness - equality and fraternity for eqaulity and fraternity's sake. We are all the same under the skin, so let's ignore our differences - or rather let's pretend they don't exist - politically correct relativism-cum-denial. Rather what we are about here as we embark on the self-enquiry of week 11, is to not only recognise but celebrate the difference that we are, but not in a way that excludes us or others, but in a way that authentically includes us as part of a dynamic interconnectedness of being. To reach too quicky for the 'we are all one' position may deny us the richness of human experience. we may be all one ultimately, but we live in a world where we seem different, where we seem unique, and at that important and undeniable level of perception, we are different.
Another shadow to watch for this week is the inherent tendency we have to want to fit in whatever cultural grouping we belong. This need to 'fit in' always comes at the expense of our authenticity. We may constantly compromise who we are in order to feel accepted, but this can only be the case if we believe ourselves to be excluded from the start. This feeling of exclusion, existential isolation is an assumption deeply rooted in our western cosmology - this belief in absolute separateness touted by Descartes and other enlightenment / endarkenment philosophers (though it has its roots in much earlier Christian and Greek culture) in so inherent in our cultural conditioning that we have absorbed it unconsciously even if we don't recognise it consciously. What we learn this week as we invite the energy of Aquarius (and the planet of the radical magician, Uranus) to teach us, is that it is only through embracing our own radical difference and being willing to stand for it, that we can truly create and participate in authentic community.
So what is authentic community? Well, my suggestion is that it is a dynamic where, through a naturally and implicit experience of genuine inclusion, each individual feels liberated to express the difference that they are and the difference that they make to that community. Natural, implicit inclusion comes from a place of abudance, a place of knowing that we belong, and that we belong existentially because we are all inextricably inter-connected with one another. This is what we are learning experientially as we take this magical journey into wealth and abundance. we are all dynamically connected to one another. So we cannot be excluded unless we pretend to exlude ourselves. If we really take on the realisations of quantum physics and the teaching of eastern philosophy and spiritual wisdom teachings down the ages, then exclusion reveals itself to be a pretence, an inauthentic construction that results from faulty perception and poor education. Inclusion is the only authentic condition of community and the honour of difference within that, I believe, is the access to realising that.
Love John x
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