The Autumnal Equinox: The interweavign between balance and change
The Autumnal Equinox
9/22/23 11:49 pm, PDT / 9/23/23 2:49 AM EDT
Depending upon your location the Autumnal Equinox, which aligns with the Sun’s ingress into Libra happens either very, very late on September 22 or early on September 23. Seen as a turning point in the year, this shift marks our official entry into Autumn.
All of the solstices and equinoxes take place as we astrologically move into a cardinal sign. These signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn respectfully) mark the beginning of seasons.
On June 28th, 2023 a new era in astronomy was announced when scientists collaborating from around the world discovered low-frequency gravitational waves created an ambient hum of spacetime ripples pervading the universe. This occurred shortly after the Summer Solstice, when we entered Cancer, illustrating Plotinus’ words “…everything breathes together.” We moved into a new season in the realm of astrophysics. Basically, put more poetically, they discovered that the universe is singing.
Cardinal signs bring change. Signs of initiation and new beginnings, there is a restlessness about them.
The entrance into Libra takes place as day and night, light and dark, are equally balanced. This is so evocative. Libra is represented by the scales, a set of balanced scales to be precise.
The one constant in life is change. If we look at the scales as symbolically telling us to balance this too is a dynamic process. Because we, like the world around us, are evolving moment by moment. We often approach balance as a still point, which it is but that is simply a moment. The present moment. And then everything moves forward and must be rebalanced.
If we consider everything is in motion coming to balance is an ongoing process.
To experience a sense of harmony within our lives we must balance our inner and outer worlds, time alone and sharing time with others, work life and personal life, and more. Each of them is important and achieving a sense of inner peace is a constant dance where we are endlessly moving towards equanimity.
This begins by recognizing that restlessness, doubt, and longing are all signs of the universe urging us forward in a new direction.
Unfortunately, all too often we ignore these yearnings. We are ongoingly invited to listen to our own music, but we just can’t seem to hear the beat or we talk ourselves out of the song of change calling us forward because it just doesn’t seem to make sense. When we fail to listen to our inner world we essentially exile ourselves from our own experience. The longer we do this the greater incongruence we feel between what we yearn for and in the life we are living. Eventually, when we have failed to respond to ourselves the dark night of the soul emerges.
Recognizing that this inner pull, this inner true north, is the essence of belonging to ourselves and our lives. It is about gracefully moving with the energy flowing around us in a dance with the ever-so-responsive universe. Though it may appear to be outside of us we are really at one with it. We have simply forgotten. I have profoundly come to believe that no matter what pathways your natal chart may lay out for you, so much of human life is in essence the practice of listening, of moving in time with our inner music.
When I am reading for someone, I usually detail what I believe are the two core ways of working with transits and progressions (measurements of chance which can symbolically be seen as the musical timing of the universe). You can either lean in, meaning listen by considering what the planetary archetype is asking of you knowing it is guiding you forward or you can be dragged into the future like a screaming toddler as the universe will always get you where you need to go. (I always somewhat ruefully add that I have done both and I highly recommend the former. )
Now this is a little black and white, there are all sorts of shades in between but I also readily admit, that learning how to not just hear but listen to my inner longings that go against my so-called logic of what is “responsible” has been both one of the greatest challenges and joys of my life.
To listen to your inner world, meaning responding to it by taking some action, even a very small one, is the first step on the road to truly trusting your soul’s journey. This homing device, that so very often we have been completely conditioned away from, is from my perspective the voice of our soul speaking to us.
When we don’t listen we compromise ourselves. Usually, this shows up as a sort of divine discontent with our current lives, perhaps even a sense of feeling like we are a fraud. We are desperately waiting for things to change forgetting that we are the agents of our own delivery.
We are the ones not heeding our own cries for freedom, and if we ignore ourselves long enough we no longer trust ourselves and become immersed in self-doubt. This arises because we have essentially abandoned ourselves. And no affirmation, relationship, job, or location is going to fix that. This is why our relationship with ourselves, often referred to as self love, or self-respect, is at the core of everything.
As Glennon Doyle said in Untamed, “I quit trying to control myself and began to trust myself. We only control what we don't trust. We can either control ourselves or love ourselves but we can’t do both. Love is the opposite of control.”
Loving ourselves is a practice. I am proposing that as we move into this new season we begin a new practice of loving ourselves. All of ourselves. There are no good parts and no bad parts.
The Jewish High Holiday of Yom Kippur takes place between sundown on September 24 and September 25. It is known as the Day of Atonement when Jews seek forgiveness and start fresh with God. It is truly beautiful. The catholic rite of confession has similar roots. A seeking of forgiveness.
There is no self-love without forgiving ourselves.
The original meaning of the word sin was to miss the mark, in archery it is still used. Who hasn’t missed the mark in life?
Loving ourselves is innately related to atonement, to forgiveness. From this place, a place of self-compassion, we come back to balance. When we absolve ourselves from the sense of being simultaneously too much and yet also somehow not enough we experience peace. We set ourselves free from an invisible prison that we ourselves created.
