There was a joke going around several years ago and it went like this: “This life is a test, it is only a test. If this had been a real life you would have been given instructions as to where to go and what to do.” It was very funny because so many of us feel we came into this world without a manual. So where can we go or who can we ask to give us a sense of what we have been put here to do? The answer is: The North Node. The only place I know to get this valuable information is with a natal chart in hand. The moon’s nodes (both north and south) mark the pathway where the moon crosses the sun creating sensitive points in a chart. When reading a chart they are the indicators of the native’s past (South Node) and their future (North Node). The sign the South Node is in tells what kind of energy and activity has been done to death and needs no further investment of that person’s time. The North Node’s sign tells the bearer what will give them a feeling of novelty and excitement because it is a new concept to them. By studying and following the sign indicators of their North Node the native can actually receive instructions on where to go and what to do in this life! There are lists of careers for every sign of course, but beyond that, one may simply cultivate an attitude and develop a playbook that matches the sign of their “North” and feel a certain satisfaction, a rare frisson everywhere they go. My North Node is in Sagittarius, a sign of higher learning and philosophy. I notice when I blindly take on projects that make my heart beat a little faster or things that promote my chosen career, if I check back on that moment transit-wise my North Node is throwing a party and has invited quite a few friends. When I started this blog the North Node in the sky was on my own NNode.Neptune currently traveling through my 10th house made a nice sextile to my NNode and the Sun, Mercury and Venus (in the 4th) were all trining it. Nice indicators of communicating with my fellow human beings spiritually orientated musings and (hopefully) having a positive impact on not only them, but myself as well. Nothing like getting a little astrological cheer-leading from the sidelines.
Tag Archives: fulfillment
The Importance of Vision
February 2007
“…Live the life you have imagined…” -Thoreau
“Be the change you wish to see in the world” -Gandhi
The second day of February is historically more than the Groundhog’s Day. On the old pastoral calendar it was the first day of spring! Now, we may have a foot of snow on the ground, but underneath the soil the seeds are stirring. When I walked out the other morning I heard the Chickadees singing “Say Phoebe” the translation of which must be something like, (among other things,) “Hey! Want to build a new life together?” Every year the hardy little birds lead us all in pushing nature’s restart button. In support of them (and breaking with tradition,) this is the time of year I am most likely to make personal resolutions or plans. This is time of year to have Vision.
For me, having Vision is an extension of being awake and aware in life. It is the simultaneous melding of accurate present circumstances with an imaginary future for the purpose of achieving my desired goals.
The first part of Vision is to periodically run reality checks on all our operations, to see things as they are in order to embrace what is really going on. To tell ourselves the absolute truth, we need some understanding of who we are, what we want and why. We don’t need to be psychic to see that when we take what has manifested around us and add our feelings and reactions to it, we project a future. It’s just like watching a movie where the leading man (or woman) has a peculiar attitude that you just know is going to propel them into certain circumstances for good or ill.
The other half of having Vision is holding onto a picture of the future as we imagine it. Where do we want to go? Picturing your life as you would like it to be means understanding who you would be in that life and that is the key to getting there. To overtake that future requires being that person right now. It is good to have some steps in mind for the journey but remember over-planning will get in the way of any unforeseen yet fortuitous happenings. We are interested in the result, not attached to the process. We must be willing to balance our idea of how we think things should happen and having faith, for the universe delights in unexpected short cuts. With that in mind have all the long range goals you want.
Now we stand back and marry both sides, asking ourselves: do they mesh? Are we headed for the future we want? Or is our Vision skewed in some way and why? What are we willing to do differently to get there?
Vision is our mooring in life, without it we drift on a tide of reaction and indifference. It’s another of those things I think is sadly lacking at the moment. We have mission statements, business models, projected sales and financial planning, but, I don’t see much Vision at work in our world, not positive vision anyway.
An example of global Vision would be for a country to have an accurate sense of the outcome on any action it may take. Governments especially, must have Vision; all good leaders should have a positive vision for what can be achieved. It’s not about who we have been but rather, what are we capable of? To be sure, always something far better than what we were. As a country called the United States: who would we like to be tomorrow? A kind-hearted people working toward peaceful coexistence? What kind of circumstances will be living with in 10 years? Prosperous and respected? Our present government never took this into account. True Vision in a governmental body organically produces responsibility for any outcome is a direct result of their viewpoint. Here, more than anywhere else we have the obligation to promote and preserve positive action at all times, preventing reckless reaction.
The ability to follow a present course of action to a thoughtful and logical conclusion is paramount. If our “leaders” could have skipped ahead to the idea that fighting, instead of working with enemies only breeds more animosity, and at the same time, held a vision of a world where countries could connect to what we have in common instead of fighting over what we don’t, well, we might all be living in a very different time.
Vision in a society or culture is seeing all the motivations that a group of people may possess in the pure light of day and then imagining, going beyond, to all possibilities of what they could be. Can they work through their fear of change, for instance, and learn to accept the variations of nature? Can they “see” a time when they are not afraid but confident and empowering to all? How will their new philosophy affect their infrastructure and their laws?
Vision in a community is being able to see how the town of Sandpoint’s present attitude can affect the way we will all live forever more. What do we want our town to look like, to feel like? We must understand how every decision we make today effects Sandpoint’s beauty, character, wealth and people for many decades to come.
At the foundation of all these though, remains Personal Vision, the most important of all. Everything begins at the individual level. To address your present attitude and circumstances with honesty and accuracy is to project a realistic result that one can study for acceptance or rejection. To then create and imagine a life experience that speaks more intensely to who you really are and what you are capable of is to see your life the way it should be and then, holding it in a stop frame use the image as a template to, like the Chickadees do, build a new life.
Halloween
Halloween 2005
The sky is turning ash grey and orange at twilight. The frosts have deepened and outside: all is still. The trees are almost bare, the last of their leaves rattle in the wind like a skeleton’s bones. The air is so crisp that when you take a breath, it’s like biting into an apple, an introduction to the chill of winter.
Halloween as the beginning of winter makes far more seasonal sense than the end of December when winter is almost half over. I see our blind allegiance to the present (fairly meaningless) traditional naming of the seasons as another symptom of a lost sense of rhythm with the earth. Yet, if we follow this seasonal thread to its logical conclusion we will see why All Hallows Eve is not only the first day of winter but also why it became spooky to so many.
Halloween is a time fraught with many varieties of vertigo.
The autumn colors are no doubt, beautiful, but they also mean death. We are all but surrounded by the falling leaves, dying plants and dead insects. The sun is not spending very much time with us either and what little there is of it is slanted and low. The outside world is folding it in for a very long night. Sometimes we may wonder: how did we get so lucky to live through it? There was a time when that was in doubt.
Long ago when we made a more direct living from the land, the spring and summer months were times of ease, food was abundant and hunting was a leisurely affair. Then October swung around. As the weather grew colder the harvest became more frenzied. Soon the snow would fall. Everything possible had to be picked preserved without the help of freezer or refrigerator.
There would be no stopping by the grocery store to stock up, what we grew and gathered and preserved was all we had to see us through a very serious time of lack. In addition to the seeming death of the natural world, this was also the time of year when we slaughtered most of our livestock. It was necessary, we needed the extra food and there was no way we could support feeding a lot of animals through a time we could barely sustain ourselves. The pigs or sheep set aside were only breeding pairs to begin again next spring. As we watched the herd dwindling down we must have agonized: how many must die? Did I keep the right cows? How we must have felt looking at the larder, rows of jars, salted meat, baskets of apples or cabbages. What will the winter be like? Do we have enough supplies to survive? We were nervous or even scared. With the future so unpredictable, we sought answers, so we consulted oracles: cards, fire coals, or even apple peelings to help plan our next move.
By October 31st all the preparations were over. To signify the end of the harvest many cultures have legends like the Pooka: a mean spirited Irish entity that traveled across the countryside on Halloween night to claim any crops left out as his own. There was to be no more gathering, winter was upon them.
So through the dark doorway of wintertime we pass, uncertainty our guide. It is natural that we now spend time contemplating our own mortality and that age old question: Where do we go when we die? We call it the “other” side and it is said the veil between our world and the other is the thinnest at Halloween. For all our progress in other intellectual pursuits, real knowledge of the spiritual realm still eludes us.
We have not found a way to study and understand something that is in this world but not of it.
Yet, some where deep in our DNA we remember where we were before we got here and may long to connect with that which lies beyond before we die. At the same time, we worry that if we really understood the spiritual realm, how would we cope with such a potentially radically different concept of life? One based on spiritual energies instead of physical form? To make the journey we will have to let go of the familiar and once very necessary. When faced with an unknown quantity such as this, it is easy let our imaginations conjure up devils and hobgoblins, but they are only the skewed physical representations of what is out there and perhaps after us: our own discomfort around any changes we know we must face.
We still carry quite a lot of antique and ancestral unease about Halloween and all it represents. It is logical to associate it with death, and death’s symbols: skeletons, ghosts and zombies. Then there are the animals. Animals that historically were said to be connected to the soul and the soul’s crossing over: Cats, bats and owls. The devil and the hag witch symbol came in with Christianity, an attempt by some church leaders to give warning to all those heathens (people living on the Heath or in the country who had not yet joined their club) that they were in danger of losing their immortal soul. But, we see monsters where we want to see them.
At this time of year we get restless with an outdated and therefore frustrating need to do something, but there is no need now to work harder at this time of year for our preservation. We eat more, blaming it on the colder temperatures and the need for extra fuel. (We’ll store up one way or another). We light Jack ‘O’ lanterns to ward off evil, (our fear of the unknown) and then we spend the night appeasing the masked ones from the other side by dropping candy bars in their bag, so they will leave us in peace and pass by.
Halloween’s many oddities have evolved from the years we spent grappling with our own demons of the past. It now calls us to rise to the challenge of change. To let go of our fears and trust in a power that is both larger then us and intimate to us. Embrace the unknown and have a Happy Halloween.