Solar Eclipse — July 2, 2019

Many similar themes found in the previous lunation emerge under this eclipse. Destructive modes of behavior are again rearing their head and taking center stage. The stale and putrid menal/emotional/physical behaviors, attitudes and things in our lives are awaiting a much needed purge and depending upon how we have dealt with the events of the previous two weeks will depend upon the discomfort implied by such a purge.

Belief systems, conceptualizations of God and the praise normally given to traditions and teachers is coming under severe scrutiny — a scrutiny born of extreme dissatisfaction or disappointment because such ideologies have not yielded the promised fruit of happiness and joy.

This is a time to contemplate what we really are here to do with our lives, whether great or small or somewhere in between. There is a sharp questioning of traditions and beliefs for those of us who have found no great treasure of fulfillment by blindly climbing such scaffolding. Ask yourself if you are really doing what you want, rather than merely attempting to fulfill some ideological construct concerning your duties and responsibilities, for in reality our greatest responsibility and duty is to our innermost joy.

Rooted in identity politics, there is often pride associated with any path that one has set for oneself. Such pride is often built upon emotional insecurity, lack of nourishment and nurturing, rather than finding its source in reality, Truth or valour. During this lunation such pride may rear its ugly head stronger than before, or it may dismantle itself violently and without warning. The question for each of us becomes 'where or how is a sense pride obstructing me?' Many of us take pride in a dysfunctional behavior or role that is negating our very joy because we have created or adhered to a false construct that we must do x in order to be considered valid as a person. Throughout this eclipse period remember that our very existence validates our being in the grander scheme of things, and no false human constructs can negate this Divine fact.

So far as man is what he is today there is always going to be a necessity to engage in activities we'd rather not have to. Yet how many times have we falsely obstructed ourselves from participating in those things which bring us deep joy because we believed we had to prioritize a set of tasks we falsely perceived should take precedence over what we really love and know to be true? It is time to lop the head off this dragon of guilt.

Too many of us fall into believing we aren't good enough or worthy of love, joy and happiness, and during this lunation we are poised — should we CHOOSE it — to break free of limiting beliefs and attitudes even if it means making mistakes, letting others down due to breaking out of a situation in which we compromised our integrity at the very outset, or plunging into the unknown, into something that sounds and appears crazy! Embrace the crazy! Embrace the change!

Many obstacles are likely to appear in the form of harsh self criticisms, anger, sadness, futility and attachments. At all times we must remember to consciously breath through such thoughts and feelings and recall that they are merely energetic patterns which have no reality save the one we give them by slavishly indulging them or violently resisting them. Whatever your primary obstacle is, there is now an opportunity to face it head on and see it for what it really is. Revisit your challenges over the last two weeks and see them objectively. Investigate them and discover if there is any veracity behind them other than your own mind!

When Truth reveals itself there is often pain, the same way the eyes sting when the light of the sun majestically pierces the veil of the clouds. Like happiness derived from sensory pleasures, this pain is also impermanent, subject to birth and death. In this fact lies the key to facing one's demons.

OM TAT SAT OM

Addendum: Tarot Spread for the Eclipse

(Sacred India Tarot)

In the 9 of pentacles Buddha reveals and transmits the highest teaching of Dhyana (aka Chan or Zen), without words, via the simple act of holding up a flower. This simple act conveys the essential unity of samsara (ignorance & bondage) and nirvana (enlightenment & liberation from suffering). Spirit & Matter are in fact one and the same, life is perfection in action, here and now, not in some great beyond. Happiness is found in the simplicity of life, not in the complex network of identity politics we often live in and the mountains of achievement we believe we should climb.

Yet skepticism of this simplicity and perfection follow in the 9 of wands, wherein the avatar-king Rama is pictured in a dilemma concerning false rumors surrounding his wife. Nine is the number of spiritual crisis and completeness, and thus the tarot is portraying the struggle between being in the world in a holistic and complete manner vs a radical confrontation with our own identity and place in that world as a self proclaimed individual! The message is clear: life is simple, just live it . . . but the mind, the identity, asks 'but how?' . . . each one of us can only answer this question for ourselves, but these two cards alone reinforce the themes discussed above concerning a casting away of the false notions concerning ourselves that we have gathered throughout life. These ideas and attitudes must be scrutinized.

The ace of cups pictures Siva in meditation surrounded by various mahatmas and here it is a card beckoning us back to the seeds of true joy and happiness, which again are simple and found in silence, in stillness. The dilemma of how to live in wholeness will not be obtained through thinking (9 of wands) but by being still and breathing through the thoughts, feeling them for the truth rather than obsessing over them via the mind.