Mirror Mirror on the Wall: Lunar Eclipse in Libra
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Lunar Eclipse
Monday, March 25, 2023, 12:00 am PDT/3:00 pm EDT: 5°7 Libra
We live in an extraordinarily responsive universe. When we honor our connection to it, when we become aware of the correspondences between the planetary movements and our lives we are able to move into a more trusting relationship with life. We profoundly know that we are never really alone but that the ever-responsive cosmos is dancing alongside leading us forward.
In spiritual circles, we hear the statement everything is connected and wisely nod our heads in agreement but seldom take a moment to appreciate the depth of this statement. Everything includes us.
This is about understanding from an embodied perspective that your birth chart is a living breathing thing, connected to you. You and your chart aren’t separate entities, the drawing, the map is a representation of your personal energetic consciousness unfolding. If the sky is symbolically speaking to us because it is, in essence, part of us, remember everything is connected. Viewing your chart in this manner gives you enormous power to consciously facilitate the transformation of both your inner and outer reality. Which of course are intimately connected, we have just been taught that they are separate, in the same manner, that we have been taught that we are separate from each other. Theoretical physics and the study of consciousness itself and theories of entanglement contradict any concept we are separate. We just perceive life that way. It is one of the great lies we tell ourselves, that we are alone. How can we be? It is literally impossible but it is human nature to equate our individual perceptions with reality.
Just imagine what our experience of life would be like if we didn’t insist upon our separateness, on a personal level but also within the greater world at large.
As I write this the Middle East is imploding, Ukraine is fighting for its sovereignty, and the country where I reside, the United States, has been in a state of unrest for years. This too at its core has its roots in the illusion of separateness. How else could anyone justify committing atrocities against another?
I have heard astrologers refer to eclipses as either New Moons or Full Moons on steroids. And while this is true I must return to the premise that everything is connected. We feel, and experience them this way because everything is connected. We individually and collectively are connected to this astrological/astronomical event. It is part of us and we are part of it.
We are profoundly influenced by the Moon. Astrologically there is no element in your chart that influences your behavior and experience more than your individual Moon. The Moon reflects our sense of home both metaphorically and literally, our sense of safety, our physical body, our instinctual/habitual behavior, what type of nourishment and nurturing we need, the past, memory, and how we bond with others. It describes our sense of vulnerability and the challenges we feel with that sam evulnerability. It represents Soul in our chart where the Sun represents the light of Spirit guiding us forward.
Eclipses are events where these two lights, the Sun, the light of the day and the Moon, the light of the night meet. In these moments Spirit and Soul symbolically marry in such a profound way that literally the light of either the day or night is transformed for a brief period.
Eclipses are an opportunity to transform and open ourselves to our greater depths. That's what I mean when I say eclipses are an opportunity to bring light to our shadow self.
In the Buddhist tradition, bodhisattvas are those who, aspiring to enlightenment, make a resolve, “I vow to attain full enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings.” That is a profound vow: It means that we recognize our own liberation it is intertwined with the liberation of all beings without exception. In other words, we are all connected.
This eclipse takes place at 5 degrees of Libra, a sign associated with peace, with the balance of inner and outer, darkness and light. It is a sign associated with relationships, with connection. Libra invites us to make peace with those around us and to create more harmony in our environments. At its core, it is about synthesizing opposites.
In many ways, Libra, like the symbol for Venus which represents a hand mirror, is connected to mirroring. It is the I/Thou. Even though houses and signs represent two very different principles in astrology using the 1st house’s opposition to the 7th house feels apt here. The first house represents the self, the 7th the other, and also the projected/rejected self, more commonly referred to as the shadow. And eclipses often bring up the shadow within or projected without. As Carl Jung infamously said. “When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.”
The shadowed part of us yearns to be accepted back into the fold of our conscious awareness.
Our very wounding most often lies in this rejected part of ourselves. And I get it, openheartedly accepting our inner messiness is hard. I too struggle with this idealized version of myself that I am continuously trying to live up to but for me, one of the gifts of maturing is that I much more readily accept the glorious hot mess that I can be, I actually find it(her) entertaining. It is good to be able to laugh at yourself.
We speak about creating our own reality yet see the reality that we yearn for as something outside of us. We actually unconsciously insist that that is the truth, which is evident in the very reality we individually and collectively find ourselves immersed within. When we see the universe, the world as something separate from us we have no agency, no influence because we see it as something we have no influence over. Even in the most pragmatic earthbound manner, we have to be willing to open and change our beliefs about this to create a life that we would love. Otherwise, we never truly see our dreams as something remotely within our reach.
What would your experience of life be if you let go of the persistent attachment to your separateness? What dreams and desires would be in reach rather than held outside of you?
Here is my thought; we would experience them as belonging to us just as we belong to them. As the great Persian mystic Rumi said “What you seek is seeking you.”
Here is my wish for the eclipse this Monday, March 25, let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.
