Love, for me, Govinda, is clearly the main thing...The only thing of importance to me is being able to love the world…being able to regard it and myself and all beings with love, admiration and reverence.
~Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
Universal love is the realm of the 11th astrological house ruled by Aquarius the dominant sign for this month. This is where the gifts of the 5th house, the opposite house, when integrated are expressed. In the 5th house we realize self and through the ‘eyes of a child’ or inner child, express self with purity and clarity of heart. Heart is associated with Leo natural ruler of the 5th house. The ego is recognized as a function of the human being as is the individual will. Power to act in the world as a creative force is a manifestation of these realizations and is a healthy expression of the evolving human being.
By the time we journey round to the 11th house we have relieved the self of ‘attachment’ to ego gratification and are well established in a vision of that which serves the highest good. In the 11th house the individual personality is less the identification. As the personality is subsumed within a greater context, love for all or all is love pervades awareness or awareness is that, the expression of which has been referred to as Universal love, unconditional love, love that is always regardless of what is being played out upon the screen of duality and our physical existence.
The freedom experienced in the 11th house (there are no rules) to know expression of communal consciousness prepares one to inhabit the depths of the 12th house waters. We no longer fear isolation, insanity or annihilation; are at peace as awareness, shuttled to acceptance of this moment, no judgment that it should be other than what it is--and deeply appreciative of this. The month of February is preparation for the stride into simply abiding in Reality, the one Truth knowing that all else continues to flow from source, nothing lost; only Self is found.
Uranus, ruler of Aquarius is in Aries and aspects six planets closely and three others if a wider orb is allowed. Only Neptune is excluded from this arrangement. The urge for freedom from individual suffering may be presently top of the list—that is personal identification with what we have taken to be our lot. Trade shuffling through debris from the past for a ‘clean slate’. The past does not exist in this moment. Our attachment to the past is what inures us to discomfort and disharmony. Communal awareness that service for the highest good is at the core of our earthly expression motivates the release of the past in favor of being fully available as expression of the Absolute.
Perhaps a leap of faith is in order as we approach over riding centuries of conditioning and some deeply embedded collective constructs that may tend to cripple even some of the strongest among us. Picture disempowering thoughts rolling off into oblivion as water is shed from the duck’s back or rather do not attach to these thoughts. They are not real and rather certainly are not true here and now.
If the question of ‘which reality’, crosses the mind, what is real, then consider that nothing and everything is the answer and that this or that but not that cannot be the answer. This simplifies the quest. As such we have little with which to occupy the mind.
It is free of need to judge and rests. The mind rests and the body relaxes and knowing is set free.
For a few years I used a tarot deck that featured two poignant joker cards. They were left in the deck accidentally when I began to do readings one afternoon and sure enough one of them appeared in the first spread. The second showed up in a reading shortly after this. Their significance became apparent and was a welcome addition to many readings. The one which is beautifully symbolic of all that we discuss here is the image of a child releasing a bird into the sky—it became the card representing freedom to Be—no attachment. The child symbolic of purity of heart from which arises clarity and a bird a symbol of flight that carries us beyond thought structure.
Again we mention the Fool 0, the major arcana card that is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, nothing and everything as representative of Truth as there is only willingness to step out of illusion into Reality. There is nothing that need be known to accomplish this. The mind need not concern it self with the details, willingness and acceptance prepare the ground upon which we would so eagerly tread.
The final card for February is Judgment XX another major arcana card and that which announces our ascent to a ‘new level’ of awareness. We are in a sense born again, stripped of former conditioning and free to flow with what calls us. Liberation! Once we hear this call the rhythm that connects all things moves us with ease and grace. Never before has there been such simple pleasure in this moment.
February giving and receiving that which overflows all boundaries, the love that is inherent to each and every one of us.
