The Eclipse Message - In Our Own Nature
Well that was a potent shifting eclipse, helping to release a deeply held core belief that was no longer serving, bringing with it a surge of energy and clarity.
For many there has been a deep holding in the solar plexus, asking us to literally dig deeper into the wounding around loss of love for self, while paying attention to the many ways we harm the self, the words we use to talk to ourselves and the way we live our lives in relation to self - are we kind and loving to self or do we give ourselves a hard time.
It is often so deeply ingrained that we can’t see or hear it. We may have an idea that we have work to do around self-love but it seems so vast and vague a concept that we have no idea where to begin, other than repeating positive affirmations and going for some healing sessions. Little do we realise the extent to which our inner voice is tainted by criticism, because we are so used to hearing it that we cannot separate it from ourselves - we confuse it with our true selves, believing that we have no choice but to think the self depreciating thoughts, and give ourselves a hard time in the process.
We might try to give ourselves a break, do something loving for the self, but we’ll likely take away from it at the same time, feeling guilty, or stressing about finances or whether we’re worthy enough to receive. We frequently self-sabotage, limiting ourselves by the stories we tell ourself, focussing on our perceived failures and uselessness, rather than celebrating the many amazing things we do on a daily basis, making sure our family and friends are cared for, let alone trying to be a kind and respectful member of the human race, for example.
It’s difficult to shift perspective and let go of the mind-set that sees us as flawed and always in need of fixing. New-age spiritualism and healing has done nothing to alleviate this, and in many instances merely feeds the illusion established by orthodox medicine, so deeply ingrained in our psyche that even those of us who live in the holistic healing world don’t realise that we’re still buying into elements of the old paradigm, believing that there’s aways something we should be doing to fix and heal ourselves, improve our imperfections, signing up to yet another course that promises to take us on an inner journey to clear our stuff and help us to love and accept more of ourselves in the process, give us back that which we (mistakenly) believe is missing.
Inevitably we come away feeling better for taking the time to be with ourselves, even transformed and changed, and we’ll talk about ‘clearing some stuff’, of ‘feeling lighter’, of finding more of ourselves. It’s all wonderful and valid and we feel great, until the buzz drops and we find ourselves back in a similar old place of feeling uncomfortable in our own skin and we start looking outside ourselves again for another book, another course, another crystal, another full moon ceremony, another nutritional approach, more supplements, another potion, another latest trend in new age healing, and off we go again, forgetting that we need to go within.
In Sri Swami Satchidananda’s translation of The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali he writes: “Many saints were illiterate. They never knew what a school was. But we read their ideas even now. None of the Upanishadic seers went to colleges or universities. They merely sat under trees and watched nature. But their words are crest jewels now. What did their learning come from? It came from within. There is a wealth of knowledge on the inside. The scriptures say, “Know the One by knowing which you will know everything”…
Saint Thirumoolar said “a person was running and running in search of the Light. He spent his whole life doing that. Ultimately he collapsed and died because he couldn’t reach it.” Millions and millions of people collapse this way because they don’t know that the Light is within.”
It’s absolutely true. It’s often the hardest thing, not least loving and accepting the self but taking back our power to the extent that we come to know our own truth by going within. It takes time though, to sift through the many layers of conditioning that prevents us from accessing our true voice, the one that knows no harm, that is aligned to the greater plan, that understands nature and its working, that knows that there is nothing to be done, there is no personal action, just a sense of our place in the grand scheme of it all for the greater good of the cosmic plan.
This can bring a huge letting go of all we once thought was the way, was our nature, the one of achieving for the sake of achieving as if to prove our worth in the world. Even in the spiritual world we see this played out, always this need to be someone, feeding the need for validation and acceptance, because we struggle to find that within ourselves and therefore externalise it instead. There is a risk of judgment too, judging those who don’t feel the same way, but even this just boils down to the same thing, judgment of self ultimately. Self-love is key in setting us free. Self love is also key in helping to free us from polarity.
I’ve certainly noticed a positive shift since spending more time being still and quiet in nature, as if nature comes to greet us and we become less separated from it. It helps us to recognise and accept more of our own true nature, that we are the way we are, and even thought that’s different to others and doesn’t necessarily tick a box, whether that’s in the spiritual world or not, doesn’t matter because ultimately there’s nothing wrong with us - we’re all inherently perfect, we just need to recognise it.
In this way we start to hear more of our own wisdom and that which comes to us from nature, that connects us in to deeper levels of consciousness. We are more likely to do what we can to lessen the external noise, to switch off and switch in, to draw a line in the sand, know when its time to put down the self-help books and take a break from the ceremonies and courses and go it alone, into the depths of our own soul that is connected to all of the wisdom, if only we could quieten our minds to the extent that we could hear it, if only we love ourselves to the extent that we believed in our ability to receive it.
We have to be so careful about putting people on pedestals. Some will want us to place them there and others we will put there. People tend to fall from pedestals and we run the risk of feeling betrayed and disappointed if they do not live up to our ideals. Furthermore this merely fuels our disempowerment as we give our power away to those we have placed on pedestals believing them more enlightened or sorted than we are, forgetting that we are all mirrors and each one of us has something to learn from another - we will always see our stuff in others if we can remove the rose tinted glasses that encourages us to see the world in a rose tinted way - if we do not know ourselves we will make mistakes in knowing other things and other people too.
The message was clear on the equinox - go within and love and accept the self -be in our own nature. It’s no easy feat, a lifetimes work for many and others fall at the first hurdle and turn back to their usual numbing techniques as a way to avoid having to be with the self and love ourselves for who we are, for our true nature. We all have a choice and equinoxes have a habit of highlighting where we need to chose differently, where we need to re-align and do the work in letting go rather than fixing.
Love Emma
