See the magic. Feel the oneness. Experience the perfection. Enjoy your magnetic presence.
September 10 – Pisces Full Moon Conjunct Neptune
2:59 AM PDT (utc-7) The Sun and Moon are at 17° Pisces.
With Neptune in Pisces (24°) joining this Pisces full moon, we are being gifted an opening for spiritual attunement.
Virgo and Pisces
Zodiac signs come in complementary pairs. Virgo and Pisces are partners. Each full moon happens when the Sun is opposite the Moon in the opposing sign. Full moons are generally known for the tension that we feel. It is documented that the crime rate often escalates during the time of a full moon. Full moons are also optimal times to alchemize the polarity pairs into an expanded state of being.
A factor that is often ignored is that the polarity pairs need each other to fully develop. In this blog we look at the integrative relationship between Virgo and Pisces.
ATTENTION ALL VIRGOS: I want to honor Virgos with the more in depth appreciation of the too often hidden meaning and magic of the Virgo archetype.
Zodiac Sequence
There is a progressive zodiac sequence that maps out our human journey. The first six signs are known as the personal signs. On the birth chart they are represented as the signs associated with the six houses below the horizon. Their focus is on the exploration and development of self.
Aries reminds us to enjoy of being alive. Taurus connects us to our body. Gemini wakes us up to the fact that we have a mind. Cancer introduces us to our emotional body. Leo opens up our personal creativity and self-love. The goal of Virgo, the sixth and last phase of our personal journey, is to integrate all of the above into self-expression, work, life, and our relationship with Mother Earth.
Virgo’s personal goal is to achieve a sense of individual autonomy and presence before we move out into the world and into relationships. (Themes of the six houses above the horizon, represented by Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces.) The extent to which we have learned our Virgo lessons, we are ready to venture into Libra territory (and beyond), where we connect with others from our own authenticity.
The Virgo Archetype
Virgos often get a bad rap as being knit-picky perfectionists, and they are often overly self-critical. Because Virgos are service-oriented and quite capable, they are often over-worked and under appreciated. I know a Virgo manager who says no one does anything when he is absent, and even when he is there he does most of the work. Our lives can always benefit from the common-sense, productive, efficient, problem-solving abilities of Virgo.
Virgo is concerned with developing discernment or the ability to know what to focus on, what to act on, and what to ignore. Virgo teaches us to give our attention to what is useful, relevant, and empowering.
The Virgo glyph is a Virgin Maiden harvesting the plentiful crops from the Earth. It is interesting that Virgo is the only sign represented by a woman. Virgo is also represented as a priestess (or a priest.) Virgin refers to the untainted perfection of our own being.
Virgin Virgo is the symbol of personal wholeness and autonomy, achieved through the embodiment of our soul and Spirit. Virgo overcomes the tendency of picky perfectionism as it learns to see (though Pisces wide lens) the perfection of existence. It is this spiritual symbology that we wish to investigate.
The Pisces Archetype
The unawakened Pisces archetype indulges in fantasy and illusion. Awakened Pisces represents our authentic divine connection. The more we live in fantasy, the less effective we are at living our lives and figuring out what we need to do to be productive, effective, and realistic. In sum, Pisces not only needs to cultivate a real experience of non-physical energies, it needs to partner with Virgo to operate optimally in physical reality.
Virgo needs Pisces to connect to an authentic autonomous experience of Spirit and how it supports and guides our lives. It is important to remember that Pisces is symbolized as two fish swimming peacefully tail to tail in the vast watery ocean of existence. The fish personalize our relationship with the vast Mystery. We can experience that we are not alone when both our physical and non-physical parts swim together and relax into the flow of life.
Pisces teaches us to open the portal to the divine with gratitude, compassion, kindness, and loving devotion to the Unknown Mystery.
September 9-10 – Mercury Goes Retrograde
8:38 PM PDT (utc-7) At 9° Libra.
Six hours before the peak of the Pisces Full Moon, Mercury goes retrograde, where it supports deep meditation and self-reflection through October 3. We are in an intense retrograde period. Jupiter, Saturn, Chiron, Neptune, and Pluto are all retrograde. October 8 Pluto goes direct.
Retrogrades give us time to rethink, re-evaluate, and plan. We can take advantage of this time to practice feeling, instead of thinking. We can connect with our own truth by listening to our intuition and heart..
This much retrograde activity (perceived as a lack of activity) may make us feel a bit stuck or blocked. However, this is a good time to make internal shifts that make external progress possible. This includes identifying fears, beliefs, conditioning, and unresolved emotions and trauma that are holding us back.
September 5-29 – Venus is in Virgo
Venus is in Virgo September 5-29. The presence of loving Earth energy supports Virgo’s quest to embody Spirit. The Earth energy helps us think less and feel more, allowing us to cultivate a palpable experience of our personal presence. (which we will discuss below)
September 20-26 – Grand Earth Trine with Venus, Uranus, and Pluto
Uranus in Taurus and Pluto in Capricorn form a supportive trine with Venus in Virgo. The trine (flowing) relationship helps us release tendencies to try to control outside circumstance, (i.e. others), get into power struggles, indulge in ego wars, or feel helpless, victimized, or resigned to circumstances.
Pluto challenges our ego self. Pluto wants us to get serious about awaking to our true inner identity. Working together, the earth signs facilitate alchemizing our inner power into strength, resilience, and autonomy. With embodied personal autonomy, we can act from our soul self, instead of our ego.
September 26 – Mercury Retrograde Conjuncts Venus at 26° Virgo.
Reserve this day to simply love yourself and your life. Honor what you have been through. Give yourself credit for all that you do. And appreciate who you are! Remember there is only one of you. If your soul reincarnates, it will manifest as someone else. So make the best of being you this lifetime!
Virgo Reveals Human Magic
The spiritual essence of Virgo awakens us to the human capacity to spiritualize matter – to integrate non-physical Spirit into physical reality. This is a totally unique capacity of humans that is too often overlooked, not understood, not taught, and even denied.
The root cause of human suffering is not activating and thus not living in the reality that makes the conscious integration of Spirit into our human experience possible.
This problem is ingrained in the perspective that pervades traditional spiritual paths, which focus on the non-physical aspect of reality and deny, try to escape, or transcend physical reality. We are lead to believe that physical reality is not real, not valuable, and only a disturbing nuisance and illusion.
Traditionally physical yoga was practiced to activate the body’s physical mechanisms that make subtle awareness and consciousness possible and prepare the body to hold higher non-physical frequencies. Often after awakened states of consciousness were achieved, the yogis forgot about or neglected their bodies and did not do the emotional work necessary to ground their spiritual awareness into their bodies.
Attempting to detach from our physical lives and avoiding our emotions doesn’t work (and has serious negative consequences) for us modern yogis who must operate in the world.
Both physical and non-physical dimensions are part of the human experience and required if we wish to ‘bring heaven to earth’ and spiritualize our human experiment. How can we be a happy human being if we don’t have a complete formula that makes happiness possible?
Not Our Body, but in Our Body Vessel
Spiritual paths teach us that we are not our body. It is true that our soul essence is not our body and that our soul will continue to exist after it leaves our physical body. But our body is the vessel of our soul while it is having a human experience. To serve our soul and to maximize the possibilities of our human experience, we must take care of and honor the gift of our physical vessel. When we fixate on ‘I am not my body’ and relate to our body as an object and a concept that we ‘think’ about, we distance ourselves from our soul.
In our thinking minds, we cut ourselves off from our sensory relationship with our body. As a result, we do not have an intimate relationship with the sensations in our body or with our emotional and subtle bodies. We disconnect from the sensory capacities and experiences that make it possible to have a relationship with both the physical and non-physical aspects of our human beingness and our soul.
Integration in First 3 Chakras
The non-physical aspects of our being are experienced in the upper (6th and 7th) chakras.
The integration of these impersonal energies happens in our first 3 chakras, which are designed to make the spiritualization of matter in the physical body possible. The neutral stillness that we experience in the upper 2 chakras holds a steady space for the active, moving, creative energy and activity of the lower personal chakras. Working together our chakras make it possible to experience our unique wholeness and our dynamic personal presence.
The challenge (which many try to avoid) is that we have to feel and understand the reasons for the accumulated stress, tension, and discomfort in our body. And we have to accept and love what we experience to transmute this energy into higher frequency experiences. This is where the ‘I am not my body’ arises as a defense mechanism to give us an excuse to avoid inevitable discomfort and pain. But disassociating from the sensations and mechanisms of our physical vessel, which make it possible to embody the Presence of our soul is counter productive and sabotages our journey. We can’t spiritualize matter, become complete human beings, and realize our true essence if we are not present in our body!
Our Spiritual Practice
Our spiritual practice facilitates the unfolding of our human experience. With subtle sensitivity we can expand our perception of non-physical dimensions and integrate universal qualities (that are innate in our own being) into our own identity and how we operate in the world.
Our chakra centers are designed to work together to bring us into deeper levels of being at the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual levels.
From Ego Identity to Soul Presence
Human Beings are designed to evolve beyond a limited ego identity, (which is a conditioned mental construct), into a substantive presence that radiates the divine qualities of our soul. When we can live our human lives from a personal presence that embodies our soul and Spirit, we can have a personal human life that brings us fulfillment, is filled with value, unfolds with magic, and brings us true inner happiness.
We polish our diamond in the midst of our human experiences by exploring the hidden essential truth in our personality manifestations. By understanding what has been considered ‘false’ as simply undeveloped, we can develop our human beingness to experience what is ‘real,’ authentic, and meaningful.
Autonomy and Freedom
No spiritual path offers quick fixes or immediate results. This is obviously true of our pursuit to experience autonomy and freedom, which are a package deal.
From the ego’s point of view, autonomy is often defined as being able to do our own thing. To experience authentic internal freedom, we have to release ourselves from past conditioning and spurious beliefs, including what we believe and experience, to be our self. Our ego identity is a concept, an image, and an amalgamation of roles, qualities, or activities. Our soul self is none of the above.
♥ We experience our soul self as a consolidated, contained sense of personal presence that makes autonomy possible. It allows us to choose, pursue, and enjoy our endeavors without feeling restricted by external factors and dependencies, and internal attachments, beliefs, and judgments.
♥ Autonomy, from the spiritual perspective, can also be understood as the freedom to experience our own soul essence and our personal relationship with Spirit.
♥ Real autonomy manifests in our psyche from a sense of identity that is grounded in a feeling presence in our body that radiates through all our energy bodies.
♥ The deeper authentic level of autonomy can be summarized and experienced as a personal, autonomous presence of soul and Spirit.
Magnetic Attraction Mode
We evolve to the magnetic attraction mode as we cultivate an autonomous experience of self that is not needy, dependent, or dissatisfied. Our touchstone experiences include (1) I am autonomous and never alone. (2) I am Self-satisfied and Self-supported.
It is important to remember that archetypal issues never completely go away. They are always active in our human experience. They reoccur for deeper healing and awakening as we learn to operate from the power and presence that comes from their resolution. We can experience resolution as we (1) no longer get pulled into the same dysfunctional patterns, (2) realize that we don’t need to act out the need to get attention, validation, and approval, and (3) cease to feel the need to fix what is not our business or take responsibility for making everything OK.
Freedom is when we no longer compulsively act out our neuroses.
Happiness is when we don’t miss the drama.
Fulfillment is when we enjoy our personal intimacy with all that we experience.
Practice Presence with Kundalini Yoga and Meditation
The goal of experiencing our personal autonomous presence adds meaning and purpose to our Kundalini Yoga and Meditation practice.
The practice of Kundalini Yoga gives us a great feeling or “high,” which results from an increase in frequency, as our whole system is oxygenated, our nervous system strengthened, and feel-good hormones are secreted and released into the bloodstream. These effects also make it possible to become more aware and conscious of the subtle aspects of our being and to experience the energetic presence of our soul in our body. We can have fleeting experiences of bliss, but our long-term goal is to cultivate a lasting and embodied sense of our personal presence.
Cultivating a sense of embodied presence obviously requires connecting with our body in feeling awareness. We can practice presence by feeling the sensations and aliveness in our body during and after each exercise in any kriya of our choice. After each exercise, at the end of a set, during the deep relaxation, and then in silent meditation feel your energetic presence in your body.
Feeling Our Presence
Feeling the sensations in our body is the experiential awareness that leads us to finer attunement with our soul being and non-physical frequencies. Feeling awareness is the mechanism which can be gradually refined to the point where we experience ourselves as an individual Presence that is one with the Universal Presence.
It is a very delicate and subtle affair to embody our soul and Spirit with feeling awareness in our body. Subtle discrimination is required. This involves making Spirit personal. To make Spirit personal, choose a universal quality, like peace, neutral, stable, still, love, imperturbable, radiance, light, joy, etc, that you resonate with and feel its presence in your mind and body. With practice you will have your personal experience of these universal qualities of impersonal Presence.
With subtle sensitivity you can experience a palpable presence, a state of fullness, strength, and wholeness, which allow you to feel autonomous and authentically yourself. This happens in the body, not in the thinking mind. When you can identify with the fullness, presence and not an image or emotional state, you have begun to embody your soul.
You will experience that you are simultaneously autonomous and at one with the Divine or the Great Mystery.
Standing Exercises
Standing exercises are important to ground our sensitivity in our body. A great kriya to practice, given below, is Emotional and Mental Balance on page 260 in The Gift of Womanhood. Another short kriya is Healthy Belly and Hips on page 259 also in The Gift of Womanhood. A longer kriya is Healthy Body Kriya on pages 209-210. Following each exercise, take at least 30 seconds to experience your presence.
The Gift of Womanhood is available from Yoga Technology in both printed and eBook formats.
Kundalini Yoga for Emotional and Mental Balance
Stand with knees and heels together, feet angle out for balance, legs straight. Interlock thumbs to keep hands together, palms facing forward. Pull the root lock and navel as you bend backward from the base of the spine, forming a backward arch, arms hugging the ears. Hold the posture and breathe long and deep. You may begin to shake. This is the nervous system adjusting. Hold for 1-2 minutes. This posture calms the emotional angry person.
From the previous posture, very slowly bend forward, releasing the root lock. Keep the arms close to the ears. Bend forward from the hips, bringing hands toward the ground. Do not bend legs. Stretch at your hips to adjust pelvic region. In the downward position, inhale and, with the breath held out, pump the navel center. Exhale, hold the breath and pump the navel center. 1-2 minutes.
Standing with the legs spread as wide as possible without losing your balance, bend the elbows so the forearms are parallel to the floor, extending forward in a relaxed position. Rotate the hips in a large complete circle at a moderate pace. Either direction is fine. 2 minutes. This movement massages the back of the spine.
In the same standing position, move the arms in a backward rotation, keeping the arms away from the body. While rotating the arms, bend forward half way from the waist and hips, then come up, and then bend backwards as comfortable, applying the root lock. 1 minute.
Relax completely for 10 minutes.
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