Age of Aquarius Gathering #1
I was moved to weave together an update from our recent community conversations and the collective consciousness as I experience it. Grab a cuppa and enjoy!
On the day of Aquarius Full-Moon we gathered. In the eternal-now space between past and future. A moment in time and a time of moments. Beautiful, heart-filled, screen-free, mind opening, blessed-are-we moments of radical sharing, learning and growing, as evolving beings living and glowing in ephemeral earthly bodies.
Bodies.
That was a big takeaway from the Aquarius Gathering #1.
I shared in circle that our first ‘community’ is in our body.
Every cell, thought, word and deed; living, growing and reproducing what we are sowing; in harmony with the whole. This forms the common-unity of who we are.
Well hopefully most of the time at least!
How much we are able to live in community with others depends on how fully we can be in unity with ourselves.
A key learning of life is becoming aware to the feedback from our body as can tell us so much about our current experience.
Are we treating our body as the temple of divine creation that it is?
Are we feeling in harmony with ourselves first?
If not, why not? What needs to shift, change, flow?
At any moment we can come back into deep presence with ourselves, through connection in the body. We can choose to slow down and notice our breath. The breath guides our nervous system. Short shallow breaths mean we are feeling stress, from this state our body and brain cannot operate at their fullest potential. We succumb to primitive programming and fight, flight or freeze. This is definitely a useful response at times of real immediate danger, like being chased by a sabre-toothed tiger, but in current times the danger is more like the constant barrage of information and rapid polarisation of the human population. These stressors require more of a multilayered ‘solutions-based’ approach. For this we need to activate our higher body-brain-heart-mind functions.
Long, slow and deep breaths can bring us into a state of calm coherence. From this state we can feel interconnected with all that is. Remember that we are powerful co-creators of our experience and can listen to the wisdom and inner guidance that arises, especially in the quiet in-between moments. Messages from our subconscious and many bodily-and-beyond systems are available, if only we will listen.
Intentionally spending time to tune in, open up, and listen heightens our intuition.
We can also use our body to shake out and our voice to speak about any fears or tension arising. Fear and tension suppressed, that is held inside the body (or mind,) causes dis-ease or pain of some kind. Be it physical, mental, emotional, spiritual or a combination of them all.
Emotions are welcome to be expressed at our gatherings, as long as they are acknowledged as that – emotions, energy in motion through the body-mind fields and the feeler takes responsibility for feeling them, hopefully through to transformation.
We are not our emotions, they are just moving through. Feelings witnessed in a safe space, like in a circle of community, can be felt, healed and transformed. Acknowledging the root causes of discomfort, holding them in our awareness lovingly and acting upon what needs to be done, is a recipe for healing.
Research suggests that we are only consciously aware of a tiny amount of our input stimulus at any one time. Much of what we think, say and do is running on autopilot, from the microcosm of the cells to the macrocosm of the mind. Becoming ever more aware of these ‘invisible’ influences is a requirement for our evolution. This is something I feel so much excitement leaning into the unknowns. A yearning for learning to discover more and more about the magical multidimensionality of life on all levels.
So to recap, our body / brain / being is our first community.
How well do you know yours?
What is the quality of your connection to and between these magnificent marvels of organic co-ordinated life? Can you feel the synergy? Or are you needing more support?
There seems to be lots of talk about ‘community’ these days. Some people feeling the urgent need to make, buy, grow and create it. Community is seen as something missing from modern life. Many people think it will solve their current crisis. There is a sense that everyone ‘needs’ community. Yes the Western-Industrial-Capitalist machine has forgotten and forgone much of what supported our previous communities to survive. Obviously many people are needing more community in their lives, but the question is, what are you giving?
There was a beautiful example of synchronicity in giving and receiving at this first Age of Aquarius gathering. In the week leading up to the event, a kind friend suggested that she would like to buy an extra ticket and asked me to donate it to someone who needed it. What a kind and generous offer! Then in the opening circle on the day of the gathering, this same friend shared bravely that she was sorry she “didn’t have much to give today but needed to be there to receive”. Without knowing the backstory, another woman walked across the circle and embraced this stranger in a big hug. “I have lots to give today” she said. I got goosebumps right up the back of my neck and smiled big as I realised that she had already received and the friend needing to receive had already given.
Unknowingly, one gave the ticket and one gave the hug. Both contributing in the ways that they could at the time and both through the sacred exchange of energy, sharing their love.
#Truthbumps!
The simple synchronicity in two strangers exchanging financial support, one giving because she could, and one receiving because she needed it. Then the gift came back in the form of connection and a, “we got you” hug, witnessed in circle. That is magic!
Energy exchange in communities is not always so direct, but when everyone participates to give what they can, when they can, there is enough for everyone. It’s just like nature!
Communities need a balance of give-and-receive in order to survive and thrive.
It comes back to the difference between rights and responsibilities.
We all want to maintain our rights. Rights to freedom, to shelter, food, education, self-determination and more. But what about our responsibilities as custodians of this planet? Our responsibility to care for the waterways, the air and the soil. Our responsibilities as citizens on Earth and part of the human family.
Inequality and apathy are insidious parasites in modern culture that must be fought bravely with fierce love, kindness and relentless commitment.
My freedom does not end where your fear begins, but your fear is still part of our collective human experience and for that we must have compassion.
After all community is made up of us all.
Every last living, dying, laughing, crying one of us!
So if all you can give is compassion, or refraining from judgement until you have at least opened your mind enough to see the other side of their perspective, then please, at least do that…
Fear and hatred lower the immune system by the way, and is best avoided.
The many faces of ‘Truth’.
Perspective is a funny thing. What looks like truth from one side can be false from the other, and vice versa. But what are some universal truths?
Remember that we live on a (squashed) spherical planet, so that shape doesn’t actually have sides!
Well except the inner and the outer perhaps?
We are all equal and interconnected! Can we be ellipsoidal in our thinking too?
Having compassion (and patience) for others who may not see life the same way as us is a radical action in times of conflict and accelerating pace. It does not mean we stand by while wrongs are committed, or enable violation of any kind, but it does mean we speak our truth, lead by example and acknowledge we are but a speck of stardust in the grand scheme of things.
Remain humble.
As always we are likely to have ‘blind spots’ in our perspective. I doubt even the most enlightened of us could hold all ideas and perceptions about e v e r y t h I n g in mind at once. This is why is it important to remain open and humble. Humility is a passageway to deeper wisdom.
With a bit of practice and focused attenergy (attention/energy – more about that later), you can move from what you know you know, to what you know you don’t know, to exploring that land of mystery unknowns, – what you don’t know you don’t know.
This process occurs through:
- The practice of questioning (critical and otherwise)
- Thinking about our thinking
- Exploring alternative ways of knowing
- Always checking the multiplicity of our perspectives and avoiding those echo-chamber silo’s of repetition, exclusion and stagnation.
As we zoom ever-more towards the event-horizons of knowing, we realise there is always more to ‘know’. It is but simple complexity and complex simplicity.
So how to we find union in these times of intense fragmentation and polarisation?
They say that a problem well-stated is a problem half-solved?
In this graphic example we see two people walking towards the same destination on what appears to be the same set of stairs. Except, what is that!!! The stairs simultaneously arrive from both directions of up AND down? How is this even possible?
Impossible architectures that bend the laws of physics provide us with useful philosophical leaps in understanding. As we try to bend our brain around comprehending the impossibility of such stairs in the physical world, our subconscious goes to work upon generalising this architecture to the structure of our other thoughts and beliefs.
What conclusions do you come to?
I am filled with both power and peace as I see us all headed in the same direction. Towards the death of our physical bodies, a statistic of 100% that cannot be bent to serve vested interests!
And perhaps we are all spiritually heading in the same direction eventually too, like rivers flow to the ocean, the intangible part of our nature – our soul or spirit – will rejoin the source oneness of all that exists, one day one day, beyond time and space in that eternal infinite place of presence.
Though (as usual!) I do still have some questions,
Who built the stairs?
Not only who crafted them, or was it a machine perhaps?
But also what are they made from?
Much like our perceptions are projections of the world around us, our answers follow the quality of our questioning… And I LOVE a good Quest of questioning.
But that’s enough for now… If you got this far, thank you for reading!
I welcome thoughts, challenges and comments – though please keep them kind. This is the online space of MY domain and rudeness will not be tolerated.
We look forward to having more of these cultural gatherings and collective consciousness connecting circles. You are welcome to sign up on the email list below if you would like to receive invitations.
Yours in awareness,
Samantha Starshine xoxoxo
Email list: https://mailchi.mp/3b518396158a/samtopia-springs-email-list
Next workshop 20th September: https://events.humanitix.com/visionary-vortex-1-essentials-of-existence?_ga=2.105153539.1048166571.1631068431-419553027.1630636854