Another Day In Paradise
For most people on this planet, 11/11/2011 will be just another day of routine chores. The commute to work, the myriad modest tasks that call for our attention. We will hasten about the minutiae of our daily lives, not pausing to gaze skywards at the glittering stars or to marvel at the moon tonight, as she spreads her numinous milky shawl, bringing magic and mystery to the landscape.
For most people on this planet, this new day will involve finding sufficient food, water, a safe shelter before nightfall. As a world financial crisis looms, this day many people will face bedrock fear about physical survival.
11/11/11 has been heralded in blogs and movies as a day of foreboding, as we indulge our perverse addiction to drama and the horror of death and oblivion.
For others, today is a day to meditate, to pray, to acknowledge that this day has special significance for our planet.
Many of us live divided lives. Longing for fulfilment in our work, more passion in our relationships, more depth in our friendships, more money, love, and eternal youth. We strain against what IS. We neglect our own natures and yearn for some ideal of perfection, somewhere over the rainbow….Modern psychology and allopathic medicine attempt to redeem us from the messiness of our lives, to fix, cut out, remove those things that cause us pain. Those unhealthy compulsions, painful choices that make us fully human, in all our complexity and in all our suffering. So maybe today we can be fully where we are. Working at our daily tasks no matter how mundane and humble they may be, entering our Fate and honouring the ebb and flow of our emotions, so that we can fully savour our brief lives, in the dappled light and the terrifying shadows.
The astrological chart for 11:11am in Cape Town on November 11th 2011 places the Lord of Karma, stern Saturn, ruler of the Ascendant conjunct the Midheaven. This represents a pinnacle, a time of responsibility and duty, a culmination of what has come before. In other places, the event chart will reflect a different sky story. In the microcosm of our personal lives, this might suggest that 11/11/11 is a day to reflect on our life direction and the choices we make from moment to moment. The Full Moon in the sign of earthy Taurus yesterday, trail-blazed a solid grounded, realistic energy that echoes my feeling that today we need to honour the simple things in our lives. Come down to earth in some symbolic way. Perhaps we might see the beauty in the smallest things that make this world a paradise of delights if we choose to perceive it in this way. So you may wish to take some time today to marvel at a jewel dewdrop on a blade of grass, or breathe in the fragrance of a flower. And “to see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour,” as mystic and poet, William Blake inspires us to do.
Our ancestors were star gazers, who observed the cycles of the planets and the Sun and Moon. Astrologers use these celestial time markers to track the unfolding of our lives and world events. Pope Gregory XIII is credited for the reformation of the Julian calendar back in 1582. We use the Gregorian calendar in most parts of the world today, a system that marks time, in a linear manner. So 11/11/11 is just a number in a man-made system of ordering the passage of time. We can choose to give it meaning, or not. “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Freud is purported to have said. So, for some, 11/11/2011 will be just another day in the wheel of the year, in the saga of an individual life, in the colourful tapestry of human history, as “we come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust” (Rumi).
If we choose to be in this moment, in this precious day, today will be like a birthday, an anniversary, a holy day, to celebrate in the knowing that long after our bones have disintegrated and we are without form, there will be an unceasing pulse of life in this vast universe, in a timeless space without beginning and without end. “The clouds preceded us… there was a muddy centre before we breathed. There was a myth before the myth began, venerable and articulate and complete,” writes the poet Wallace Stevens.
Rumi said that “only from the heart can you touch the sky”, so in gathering together to pray or meditate, or to light a candle as a ritual to set a heart-felt intention, there will be, as Noetic scientist, John Hagelin, describes a profound shift in a field of pure, unlimited, creative potential. This will ripple through the quantum field and influence our individual lives and our planet in powerfully positive ways. So today, I will honour the brevity of life here on earth, the miraculous joy of a synchronistic meeting of a kindred spirit, and the comfort of knowing we are never alone.
Gone “viral” on the internet – watch and be inspired! Murmuration: http://vimeo.com/31158841
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f7WyUnf_A8 Phil Collins sings Another Day In Paradise.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sghNjGaDbJ0 Johnny Clegg, It’s a Cruel, Crazy, Beautiful World.