All You Need Is Love
… it is in the nature of truth or love, cosmic consciousness, whatever you want to call it, to express itself, to affirm itself, to overcome difficulties. Once you’ve understood that the world is love in action, consciousness or love in action, you will look at it quite differently. But first your attitude to suffering must change. Suffering is primarily a call for attention, which itself is a movement of love. More than happiness, love wants growth, the widening and deepening of awareness and consciousness and being. Whatever prevents that becomes a cause of pain, and love does not shirk from pain. (Hameed Ali’s Ridhwan School)
The next 12-years will be a great opportunity for us all to learn about love as a means to widen and deepen our awareness, and consciousness, of what it means to be a human being. Much of this may involve pain.
One of the major planetary transits shaping world events until 2023 is Pluto moving through Capricorn. This combination of energies is offering us all the opportunity to tread the burning ground and begin the ascent of the mountain that leads to initiation. The type of initiation depends on where we are in our evolutionary journey, but we all now have the opportunity to be more consciously human, whether it’s being a better parent or partner; joining a group to save penguins, or serve the world.
Pluto began transiting Capricorn in 2008, and last year we saw the effects of the growing momentum of this partnership in upheavals such as the popular uprising called the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement. In the financial sector we saw the decline of the European and US financial markets, and the massive increase in economic growth of markets in the once labelled third world countries such as Ghana in Africa. As an example, this country’s economy grew from nearly five percent in 2010 to twenty percent in 2011. Other developing countries like Qatar in the Middle East followed with an increase of fourteen percent, and Turkmenistan in Central Asia with twelve percent. Only then comes China with a nine percent increase and India with eight percent.(1)
This may sound like an economics lesson, but by considering these facts, we can get an idea of the full implications of how radically the power balance in our world is about to change. Pluto rules power – both of the upperworld, and the underworld. How will the emerging nations handle their power on the world stage? With a less than two percent growth in advanced economies like Australia, what happens when the younger kids get hold of the key to the canteen? Economists predict rising unemployment in developed countries, and a slowdown in output which will lower living standards. (2)
All Shook Up
The world’s status quo is being severely shaken, and beside the reactions of fear, we are also seeing joyful hope that this may be the change into a more equitable and sustainable world that we’ve been hoping to see. But what will it be like in the process?
Last year we saw how Pluto can personally deliver Capricorn energy to us on a plate. According to astrology charts of the US, it has natal Pluto at 27° Capricorn. The US was born in 1762-78 during a time of economic and political crisis. As everything goes in cycles, it’s interesting to consider what sparked the rebellion by a bunch of American farmers against the British back then. We can see their demands for freedom being repeated now when Pluto again triggers the same point in the US natal chart, as disparate groups across the US and beyond demand accountability and freedom from financial, business and government corruption. (3)
Some astrologers predict that the US will have to be completely transformed in some way. (4) The US also has four planets in Cancer which is the polar opposite of Capricorn, so Pluto will be opposing them over the next 12-years. This is already affecting the US economy, and we could say that this Pluto transit through Capricorn is writ large in the US. As we’re now a global village, the slowdown in the US economy has affected the European Union (5) so that now it too is facing a crisis.
It looks as though the law of cycles, karma, and cause and effect, is working its way across the world. Many of us will be forced to trim off our excesses and let go of inessential parts of our lives, getting us back to basics and becoming “lean and mean” again, or for the first time for many of us.(6)
Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds
Capricorn represents the forces of crystallisation, while Pluto is the force of transformation. Putting these two together, it’s like the energies that impact relentlessly on any one treading the path of discipleship. Alice Bailey says that humanity is now the world disciple; that we’re ready for the trials offered by Scorpio who rules this path, and who is in turn governed by Pluto, ruling major separations and of death. ‘The arrow of God pierces the heart and death takes place.” But in this connection it must be remembered that death is definitely brought about by the soul. It is the soul which shoots the arrow of death.’(7)
There are also changes afoot in the world of religion, business, the media and any organised, institutionalised structure based on Piscean-Age, sixth-ray ideals of control of the masses by an elite group. The incoming seventh ray, augmented by Pluto in Capricorn, reveals the dirt on sex, corruption and misuse of power as our collective misdemeanors are being brought to the surface. Along with the diamonds born on the upward drive to reveal and transfigure, comes death and destruction, as Capricorn’s crystallised structures are torn apart in its searing lava flow, making way for new life.
For those watching, meditating, serving, we see the diamond potential of this great change. As we struggle with our own fears, born of being part of the collective human Soul, we also seek to energise and vitalise the diamonds of perfection within ourselves and within humanity.
Despite the increasing turmoil, we can see these diamonds emerging in the work of the New Group of World Servers. One example is a rise in a new era of art and music, as alongside some depraved art-forms, comes experiments in expressing the beauty that lies in the etheric and nature. This was predicted by Alice Bailey suggesting that the fourth-ray of harmony through conflict would usher in a new form of art. ‘The fourth ray being temporarily out of full incarnation at this time is the reason for the relative interlude in the production of human creative art of a very high order. The cycle of suffering is nearing its close, and we shall later see—when the fourth ray again swings into full objective activity—a recurrence of the arts on a turn of the spiral far more exalted than any lately seen.’(8)
It’s been suggested that if Pluto had a bumper sticker it would read ‘You can either let go now or have it ripped from your hands later.’ That same sentiment could be used for the energies of Capricorn in which we’re all bathing during January.
Stairway To Heaven
While the sun is in this sign it’s offering us a light on Pluto which, in turn, is magnifying Capricorn’s qualities of intense materialism, selfishness and cruelty on the one hand, and intense perseverance and determination to undertake whatever is necessary to climb to the top of the mountain, on the other. This climb must be undertaken by each of us if we are to manifest the New Age of order, beauty, love-wisdom and clarity about humanity’s purpose on Earth.
The last three signs of the zodiac: Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces are not directly related to our individual evolution. They govern our role as a world server, having cast off all personality hindrances so that we can fulfil our soul purpose in being here. Each time we enter Capricorn, we’re able to attune ourselves a little more to its demands for greater conformity to that still quiet voice within; to stop rushing; stop making personal plans; stop running in an effort to avoid the void. What’s that? It’s the dweller on the threshold. Bailey says that it’s only once we can truly think that we finally face the Angel of the Presence and the Dweller on the Threshold. That dweller is, for us individually, ‘the evil tendencies, the accumulated limitations and the sum total of the selfish habits and desires which are characteristic of the material nature of the disciple. The Angel of the Presence indicates the future possibility and the divine nature.’(9) For us collectively it represents planetary forces of materialism.
The seed thought for Capricorn is: ‘Lost am I in light supernal, yet on that light I turn my back.’ What is the light supernal? Perhaps it’s the light in the head we sometimes see in meditation; or it could be the radiant light that shines from a perfectly cut diamond; then again it can be the jewel in the lotus: Shamballa, the centre where the Will of God is known. It is defined by Bailey as, ‘.. a point of peace; it pulsates rhythmically as does the heart of man, and from it rays forth eight streams of living fire which extend to the tips of the four love petals and the four sacrifice petals… It is this final raying forth which produces the eventual disintegration of the body of the Ego… Naught is eventually left but the desire to “sacrifice,” and as the vibratory impulse is akin to the nature of the living Jewel, it is synthesised in the central living unit and only the Jewel of fire remains.’ (10)
When we meditate, let us invoke the fiery sacrificial energy of this jewel, as together we climb to the very top of Capricorn’s mountain to stand in light supernal. We then turn and retrace our steps, back into our everyday world, raying forth our light, bringing the love that does not shirk from pain, into the dark recesses of our struggling world.
Sources:
1. http://www.modernghana.com/news/355922/1/ghana-the-worlds-fastest-growing-economy-in-2011.html
2. http://www.conference-board.org/data/globaloutlook.cfm
3. http://blog.beliefnet.com/astrologicalmusings/2008/01/pluto-in-capricorn-a-history-l.html#ixzz1iG83NmcT
4.. http://www.librarising.com/astrology/misc/plutoincap.html
5. http://www.international-economy.com/TIE_W08_Krauss.pdf
6. http://members.bitstream.net/~bunlion/bpi/plutocap.html
7. Alice Bailey, ‘Esoteric Astrology’, p. 500-533
8. Ibid, The Rays and the Initiations p. 225-247
9. Ibid, ‘The Externalisation of the Hierarchy, p.285-313
10. Ibid, ‘A Treatise on Cosmic Fire’, p. 1109-1128