I am asking myself today how we get past the polarities that proliferate in our world?   There are so many disparities, so much turmoil, so many issues and problems.  My Gemini nature wants to understand, wants to know how to proceed.  I am wondering if there is a way that I can embrace both polarieties inside of myself – love and hate, different extremes of the principle of unity.  Hate happens when we feel separate, when we make ‘others’ out of those around us.  Love occurs when we feel unity.  So can I begin to pour love into the part of me that feels separate?  Can I fill the hole of emptiness with so much love that it begins to feel connected?  Here is a poem that might give us a clue on how to proceed.

There is a Beautiful Creature

Living in a hole you have dug

So at night

I set fruit and grains

And little pots of milk

Beside your soft earthen mounds

And I often sing.

But still, my dear

You do not come out.

I have fallen in love with Someone

Who hides inside you

We should talk about this problem,

Otherwise, I will never leave you alone.

From I Heard God Laughing

This doesn’t mean that, even when I have healed my ability to hate, I will ignore suffering.  No, I will see suffering and I will stand for justice for every evolving soul.  Let us move into our hearts and begin to coax the parts of ourselves that are hidden into the Light.   May we all do the inner work that will begin to reflect into the mirror of the outer world.  Gemini wants to make a difference.  We want to be true to our highest nature.  May we stand firm for a world where every being has what she/he needs to flourish.  Blessings on your day.

One of the things that Gemini has to learn is how to embody.  If things are about consciousness, Gemini is right there but it takes a different skill to actually move into Presence.   The shadow must be faced and the shadow of America is up big time right now.  It is time to explore, to research, to study the way that racism has kept our country from being the wonderful place it might be.  There are books to read and courses to take.  Here are a few:  

https://www.pattidigh.com/racism/.

This is a book club that my husband and I are part of with monthly conversations on the book of the month – excellent

There is also a course that she offers from time to time on Racism.  Very enlightening.  https://www.pattidigh.com/whiteness/. 

Next session begins June 23rd or 

Hard Conversations: An Introduction to Racism begins July 1

Racism

Books:  

Be an AntiRacist by Ibram X. Kendi

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

White Fragility by Robin Diangelo

Gemini loves to learn and it is so important to see the world from a variety of perspectives.  This expands the heart and brings compassion.  There is a need for deep awareness and this is something to consider today.

May we gaze at each other in wonder, opening to listen deeply to the unheard voices of our brothers and sisters.  

The Sun in Gemini gives us new and startling perceptions today.  Things around us may seem very unclear and it may be hard to discern where the truth lies.  But, once we have begun the work of clearing the filters of our past from the lens of our Gemini minds, clarity begins to shine through.  We may begin to see the things we have denied, the dark side, the shadow hidden beneath the shiny surface of our lives. 

We might also begin see the truth hidden beneath the rhetoric of our society.  We  might begin to interpret events differently than our family, our religion, or our culture and if we share our new ideas in places where it is safe to speak, our words may help others to understand what is occurring in a clearer light.    The urge today is to rise above our environment, our society and the current events in our world and get a higher and clearer perception of what is real.  We seek the freedom of open space and the clarity of a higher perspective.  We can ask the question ‘Is this the action Love would take?  What would Love do?’  We need to keep our hearts and minds open today so that our longing to truly know the truth may invite destiny to reveal something never shown to us before.  Blessings on your journey.

De-colonizing our mind

by Habiba 2019

My mind is colonized by all the things I think I have to do every day, endless lists, loops of thoughts, some current others from long ago, some practical and others dreamy. There are also ideas and beliefs circling around that attach themselves to situations and circumstances, distorting the reality into something that fits with the beliefs I have taken as my own.

I have discovered that an interesting phenomenon occurs with Mercury and Saturn and the Moon conjunct In the sign of Gemini in the 12^th house. When Saturn returned to the degree it was at my birth in 1972 and 1973, I found myself sorting through beliefs that had been given to me, some by parents, others by teachers, many by the books I had devoured throughout my life. I found that so many things that I held to be true were contrary to another bellief that I also honored. “Which one is the Truth or at least the closest to the Truth? I could not settle for less then that due to the influence of the 12^th house of spirituality and mysticism. The moon seemed to keep the heart open and expanded during this journey of discovery. Somehow it being in Gemini in the 12^th house seems to help keep it from immersing itself in the drama of the moment.

As this sorting continued, I determined that I would work to not pass on any erroneous beliefs to those around me. This required a continuous need for learning. A curiosity that had been with me since childhood reawakened, a desire to know what is Real, what is true. In my younger days, I wanted to understand, I was so sure that someone knew the plan for our existence. I searched and searched, reading about all the different beliefs of religious traditions, reading books about psychology, devouring information in a search for the Real.

In 2002 came my second Saturn Return not long after September 11, 2001, I undertook a time of unwinding myself from years of an intense spiritual path to study and practice, to try to understand what could have caused such hatred. My choice of reading material changed to Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. We joined a group of activists in Nederland and brought in speakers to help us to navigate the new information that seemed to us to have suddenly entered our reality. This all led to the Peace and Justice Center and all of their events, to Marion McGillis and Genesis Farm in New Jersey and to Pachamama Alliance and its ‘Awakening the Dreamer’ training.

Still I find myself working to decolonize my mind, to remove the veils of belief that keep me apart from the Truth. This inward journey has continued as I seek to discover anything that is blocking me from the Transparency that I long for. May this journey continue! May it come to completion! Let’s join hearts and hands together as we move on this path of clarity and Truth.

I have a thousand brilliant lies

For the question:

How are you?

I have a thousand brilliant lies 

For the question

What is God?

If you think that the Truth can be known

From words,

If you think that the Sun and the Ocean

Can pass through that tiny opening

Called the mouth,

O someone should start laughing!

Someone should start wildly Laughing – 

Now!

From I Heard God Laughing, Renderings of Hafiz

This is from another mystic Sufi poet who lived in Persia the 14th century.  It was quite loosely translated by Daniel Ladinsky and seems to speak to this moment when it is so difficult to find the Truth in the midst of so much distortion.  And yet the Sun is shining her Light on the world and the Ocean contains great Depth and Mystery.  Can we just relax into that perfect expression of Truth?  Can our minds let go of our stories and come to the still place?  Gemini and its ruler Mercury know this place even though on the outside they are often moving fast.  The planet Mercury travels around the Sun in just 88 earth days but a day on Mercury lasts for nearly 60 earth days because its rotation is so slow.  Today, let’s take a breath and start laughing at the absurdity of the idea that we can figure things out with our Gemini mind.  We are not in control.  Things are much more vast than we could ever imagine.  So let’s laugh and breathe and surrender to the Mystery.

Gemini Star # 7

It is time in the cycle of evolution for Gemini to reclaim the inner mind.  This inner mind is the observer, but not the observer that is constantly watching and judging our behavior according to the values of the world.  It is the Observer that is in communion with our soul, grounded and centered in our own being. 

I have been considering what has happened to Gemini in their relationship with today’s world.  Humanity has become a dysfunctional species and Gemini has been wounded and traumatized by its experience in this world.  Because of this, we have gone from being centered in our being, embodied and incarnated to fleeing ourselves and running into the world, looking outside for validation, looking outside for nourishment, looking back at ourselves from a distance.  For way too long we have been manipulated by the outside world.  We have tried to fit into our family, our culture, our religion.  We have neglected the unique and beautiful one that we are and have become reflections of the outer world, twinning horizontally between the world and our self.  

Perhaps it is time now to come back inside.  We have been given an opportunity to stay inside our houses, away from the busyness of the world that has occupied  all of us and especially Gemini for so long.  In asking myself how to go about this, I remember my experience of being diagnosed with breast cancer a couple of years ago.  For a few days I was in shock, of course.  Then I began to see how many stories from the collective about this word, this disease I had heard and was still open to.  I pulled my mind away from those old beliefs.  Then I saw that I was also making up stories about the future – ‘what ifs’ that were causing fear and suffering and I pulled my mind back from those.  When any of these stories arose, I unhooked and pulled my mind back to the present.  Then I began to remember a poem from Rumi, a Sufi mystic poet from the 13th century.  I will share it here.

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.

meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

And so throughout the treatment and healing of this guide that had been sent from beyond, this dis-ease, I used this poem to stay present to what was arising from within myself, being a good host for the time it had reservations.  I did learn that when some guests arrived, I needed to put out a ‘no vacancy’ sign, as I had learned that they were abusive and not truly to be welcomed.  So a new level of twin-ness arose, the twin-ness of my self and my Self, the inner one who knows and guides and always brings what is needed in each moment for our growth, for our learning, for our evolution.   And the twin-ness became vertical, filled with gratitude and joy.  And I was healed. 

May this day be a blessing to you.  May you move into your inner world and begin to welcome what arises with compassion and love.  

Books are nourishment for the Gemini mind and soul.  Geminis love to read anything and everything.  Here are a number of my favorite books of all time.  I will put a little about why I like them after the book title and you can go from there.  These books will go some way in helping to decolonize your mind.  

Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Comunity in a Fragmented World by Bill Plotkin – Shows how human development became derailed and offers suggestions of how to do the work to heal this.

The Universe Always Has a Plan by Matt Kahn – Gives the 10 rules for emotional freedom – Very uplifting – Matt is an amazing visionary and spiritual teacher – ck youtube for his videos

Wild Mercy; Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of Women Mystics by Mirabai Starr – Beautiful and powerful images of the work of women to heal the world.

The Smell of Rain on Dust, Grief and Praise by Martin Prechtel  – Hope and courage given for times of loss.  An indigenous viewpoint with great heart.

Nature, Culture and the Sacred, A woman Listens for Leadership by Nina Simons – Excellent resource for leading in a feminine style – help in moving past the patriarchal style of leading.  Nine and her husband co-founded Bioneers, a yearly conference that gather innovative thinkers, artists and indigenous ways of knowing.  

The More Beautiful World Our hearts Know is Possible by Charles Eisenstein – very uplifting vision of how we might take the steps to move into the more beautiful world.  Charles is a brilliant thinker with lots of heart.

Embracing a New Planetary Consciousness by Habiba Kabir – from a review:  Habiba gives us beautiful meditations based on the four seasons and the four elements.  She weaves together sacred traditions and her understanding of the pivotal change point we are all experiencing — the threshold of “the new heaven and the new earth.”  

Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World by Joanna Macy – addresses the anguish of people trying to address the challenges of our time and gives practices to ease the heaviness.

The Four Sacred Gifts: Indigenous Wisdom for Modern Times by Dr. Anita Sanchez – four gifts from indigenous elders around the planet to help us live a more sucessful life in these times.

Embers:  One Ojibway’s Meditations by Richard Wagamese – head on advice for facing adversity

The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos by Brian Swimme – What does it mean to be human, to live on planet Earth, in the universe as it is now understood?  The search for a new story brilliantly written.

The Sacred Universe by Thomas Berry – A leading scholar, cultural historian, and Catholic priest who spent more than fifty years writing about our engagement with the Earth, gives us a series of his best ideas.  

The Language of Emotions by Karla McLaren – an amazing work on the power of emotions.  It shows us how all of our emotions are important messagers sent to us to bring clarity, keep us in integrity, and free us from suffering.

The Emotion Code by Dr. Bradley Nelson – helps us to reach into the past and clear trauma from not just our own lives, but from our lineage and past lives as well.  Powerful work.

Cell-Level Healing:  The Bridge from Soul to Cell by Joyce Whiteley Hawkes – Gives us exercises for health and healing. Illustrated with stories, electron microscope photography, and other inspiring pictures by the author, the book shows how simple tenets of spiritual healing can be applied to individual situations.

I Heard God Laughing by Daniel Ladinsky – poems to uplift the spirit

Gemini Star # 5

Sufi information back at your request:

Planetary walks: Mercury

Mercury has been pictured with wings. The Mercury breath is in and out quickly, through either or both nostrils. It tends to speed up all processes. It is very good for short spurts, as for sprinters. It brings vitality to the surface and, if uncontrolled, can waste one’s vitality.

While Mercury does her work rapidly, she also appears to stay on the surface. People using the breath of Mercury will either attract excellent first impressions from people or no impression at all. People who align with Mercury are not necessarily deep thinkers, they just like to get things done.

Mercury tends to take short strides and is usually successful in meeting her goals. The key to a successful Mercury walk is to never move your feet faster than your breath. Keep both in rhythm. The Mercury spin (like the whirling dervishes you may have seen online) is fast and may be done in a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction. It is excellent for rapid ecstatic achievement. This ecstasy is of the sort where some mental control remains. It is needed by many types of dancers, artists and writers who wish to work rapidly.

The very word Mercury suggests ‘market’. It is a good breath to have when buying or selling, especially small items.

I remember one year at Sufi camp receiving the instruction to bring our astrological chart with us. I was the only one who did so and we spent time during that camp, walking my 12th house. It was a combination of the walk of Pisces (ruler of the 12th house) and Cancer, my rising sign and Gemini, the sign on the cusp of the 12th house combined with walks of sun, moon, mercury and Saturn  (planets I have in that house). Wow! So powerful. 

It was amazing just what could be felt as I was moving with the teacher’s instruction. Not so difficult for me, but, when others tried to walk my 12th house, they tended to fall over or walk into walls.  Love it how we are each such unique beings. So often we get caught in the vortex of the society we live in, trying to live up to the expectations of those around us. Not surprising that we fail to thrive. May we embrace the beautiful being that we are.  May we each live our unique life of wonder and purpose.  Blessings.

5/24/30

Something to consider:

According to Sufi tradition, there is a breath and a walk for each Sun sign.  They are designed to attune to the sun sign in your astrological chart.  These walks are done in an expressive manner as towards a goal or objective, outer or inner.  There is a firmness to the step or stride, looking neither right or left.

Here is the one for Gemini.  The breath comes in short spurts through either or both nostrils.  The walk is done with great vitality on the surface, almost as if one had wings.  The steps are short and rapid, alert and alive to endless possibilities.  One goes forth as a leaf blown by the wind of curiosity.  

There are also planetary walks and if you like learning the one for Gemini today and want more, tell me and I will post the one for Mercury, the ruler of Gemini tomorrow.  

In the heavens;

Today is the new moon in Gemini and for the next couple of days the moon will be in the sign of Gemini.  During this time we may be thinking about what we are feeling rather than really feeling our emotions.  One really good thing to do about this is to journal, to write down what you are feeling so that you can get it out of your head.  You can read it out loud to yourself, if you feel called to do this.  Or you can find a friend who will listen and honor what you feel without trying to fix you.   

If you were born wiith your moon in Gemini, as I was, you might find yourself standing at a distance from the collective value system and observing the drama of life in a body.  You might get really curious and wonder what on Earth is going on here, what are the rules, where is the love, what are people thinking?  You might either get immersed in the cultural beliefs around you or you might decide to break free from the beliefs of your family, their ideas of right and wrong, their entire mental construct.  We might begin a journey to discover Truth, to discover what we are here for and who this being is that is walking on earth right now, why?  So many questions, so much to discover.  

One of the things that I am sure of is that it is time to break free from the last remnants of the mind that is trying to live up to what is expected of us by our family, society or the religion we follow rather then setting us free to be the beautiful unique one that we each are.  We can no longer hold to the ‘victim’ identity.  We are sovereign entities who have been given free will in order to choose what serves us and creation.  If we don’t speak up, even silently on the inner planes, we have given over our power to the cultural imprint.  We might say that it is time  to decolonize our minds.  

It is time to listen, to watch, to stop criticising ourselves for not living up to someone else’s expectations.  The being that we are has been oppressed.  Can we open to the new?  Can we see that there is so much more to life than what we have been told?  Lets choose to see the world and each other through eyes of love.  The new moon is about new beginnings.  Let’s join together to choose anew.