Yesterday, I woke up, went downstairs to make coffee, opened my kitchen door and was hit by a different energy out there. Did anyone else feel it?
Since I studied Feng Shui and Chinese astrology in 2005, I have come to prefer celebrating the Lunar New Year rather than the traditional new year. There’s too much pressure on January 1st….Resolutions. Promises. Hopes. Hangovers. Extra kilos. It’s a fucking nightmare. With Chinese New Year, you get a chance to take a breath and adjust yourself into the new year before you have to make any commitments. Somehow, this felt truer this year, as there was such anticipation of 2020 finally being over, yet the hangover from 2020 doesn’t seem to have lifted yet.
And you know why? Because we’re still in the year of the Rat!
The ancient Chinese spent centuries observing the energetic patterns and movements of the heavens. There is a tremendous amount to be learned when you are a diligent and silent observer. Anyway, these ancient dudes noticed the heavens moved in 12 year patterns and they created an animal system to represent the various energies of each year. So, we’ve got a few more days of this rodent as we await the arrival of our Metal Ox on February 13th.
Now, before we move on to the Ox, it is incumbent upon us to understand what the hell the Rat was trying to tell us.
Remember I sent you an email about the winter solstice in December? That solstice was important, because with that, we completed our full entry into the Age of Aquarius. And, indeed, we can all sense that the past year felt like an ending of sorts. A shift. But it’s not just a change in what we see and hear, but rather, a change in consciousness as we enter a new paradigm. This is why we needed something so drastic and dramatic to catapult us to where we need to go. Change is messy. It needs to be, because we humans are a dense species who need to be hit over the head to make change.
I am not an astrologist, but to put it in easy terms, we have been in the Age of Pisces for the past 2000 years - many people call this age The Age of Christ, since its beginning started around the time of his birth and defines the time where human beings engaged more in the matters of the soul. The energy of Pisces culminated in the ideas of compassion, empathy, purity, love and devotion. It formed a trust in a higher power and the quest for the connection to something superior to the self and the idea of the ‘collective consciousness.’ The birth of Christ, the founding of the church, the birth of Buddhism and Islam and other religions and spiritual beliefs created during this time have all have influenced human life until today. The concepts of good/bad, heaven/hell and sin/sacrifice shaped the meaning of spirituality, which also brought out the dark side of Pisces that includes the ideas of guilt and suffering, religious fanaticism, intolerance, the loss of a sense of reality, drug abuse, alcoholism and addictions focused on escapism.
The Age of Aquarius (which astrologists believe has been slowly entering for the past 50-60 years) symbolizes a time of awareness, community, discovery, innovation, technology and progress. It represents the thirst for change and the longing for a better future.
Leader of the united, Aquarius is all about altruistic ideals, working together and unity.
It also governs the personal and collective mind, the investigation and distribution of information and the battle for freedom. The murky side of the Aquarius is chaos, breaking rules and progress at any cost.
And, in fact, if we look at the past 50-60 years, we see the combination – and sometimes the battle – of the two ages. Pisces says, “I believe,” while Aquarius says, “OK, bitch, let’s prove this shit and put it into action.” So, to mark this final entry into the Age of Aquarius, the Universe gave us the energy of the Rat. The last 12 months have torn apart our normal perception of reality in order to help ease us into the Age of Aquarius…again, we humans need to be whacked to understand. Any sense of certainty was taken from us and we were left wondering what do to next. We were forced to stop, stay still and look at things differently and to re-evaluate what is important to us. To re-evaluate the idea of relationships and connections. To prove the idea of the soul and our interconnectedness.
A lot of people ignored the push to go within and instead, looked outside themselves to try and make sense of what was going on. This resulted in a lot of blaming, victimization, anger and discomfort – not to mention an overwhelming sense of fear. While nothing seemed easy for anyone, it was the people who made changes in their lives and attitudes that weathered the storm best. Yet, still, many of us have this underlying feeling of fatigue, no matter how well we think we’re doing personally.
That fatigue is our hint that we cannot escape the whole – doesn’t matter how you feel personally. Aquarius wants us to feel our connection. In the spiritual world, we speak of “the illusion of our separateness” that is the cause of all problems with humanity and the path to enlightenment is but the realization of the Oneness, which is the “lifting of the veil”. These past 12 months forced to sense each other more, which is the first next step of the veil being lifted…Can I get a hallelujah?!?! This is the underlying meaning of the shift we are experiencing - the idea that what is in one, is in the whole and we cannot escape our intricate and Divine connection to everything out there. We learned about the soul these past 2000 years and now we have to experience what it means to have a soul, and at the same time, to understand that all our souls are interconnected and we are part of one magnificent system.
Now, Aquarius is not asking you to dismiss your individual soul; it’s actually the contrary. Aquarius is asking us to correct our own selves, so we can make the collective a better place. Think of it this way…you’re listening to a beautiful symphony made up of all these instruments playing their part and the music you hear is all these individual sounds coming together in harmony. Suddenly, the tuba in the back goes a little off key. The harmony is broken because that one fucker is screwing up the whole piece. That tuba did not do enough work on himself, so he screws it up for everyone.
You must correct yourself, so that we can collectively correct the symphony that is our world.
When I say this to people, I get a lot of blank stares, like “WTF does Ali mean? I’m a good person!” Yes, yes, I know, we are all amazing (take a moment to pat yourself on the back), but now let’s get into what I mean about this. I am saying that we need to start by changing the conversations in our own head and take responsibility for the energy we emit into the collective consciousness.
More blank stares.
All living things emit a current of light/energy. Thoughts are part of that energy and that energy is sent out like radio waves into the Universe and the collective consciousness. You may think that your thoughts are your own, but they are not. Your thoughts are being broadcast throughout the system. Make a list of the repeating thoughts you have throughout the day. How many of them are kind toward yourself and others? How many thoughts are a betrayal toward yourself and others? How many times do you repeat a negative event? Or make judgements in your head?
You know, I have worked diligently on myself for many many years and I have learned to be the master of my own mind…well, most times. In the times I go “unconscious” and my ego/mind does take over, and those habitual thoughts sneak in, I find that I am the tuba. I am totally off key. I realize that I spend an awful amount of energy being unkind to myself. I beat myself up about things I did or didn’t do and about things I said or did. Those voices in my head can be quite cruel, judgmental and betraying at times. YET, if I witness someone being cruel or betraying another person, I am offended. So, let me ask you this…how can I expect others to be kind if I, myself, cannot be kind in the confines of my own head? And, let us not forget the key – those thoughts are being broadcasted into the collective. Yet, I am shocked to witness that behavior in others?!!
This is what I mean when I say that whatever you see outside yourself that disturbs you is a sign of what you need to correct in yourself. We can only correct the world by correcting yourself first. So, today I ask you…
In the pauses between words and in the confines of your own mind, how are you feeling peace? Compassion? Kindness? Forgiveness? Love? Faith? Joy?
We need to build our own path to consciousness with awareness, connection and visions of community. And while this is an individual path for each of us, we hold with us the hope for an elevated, collective journey. Each one of us has to find within us our own vision of joy, love and faith, but you must hold that vision within you and speak to it; nourish it. We can’t just sit around and wait for someone to give us something we don’t even know how to hold for ourselves. We can’t look outside of ourselves and blame/criticize others when we still have not made our own corrections.
Now, finally, on to the Ox and its energy in the dawn of the Age of Aquarius.
Did you ever hear the saying ‘Strong like an Ox?’ In fact, the Ox symbolizes strength, health, trust, and honesty, but it also signifies hard work and being grounded – precisely all the things we need to get us through this metamorphosis we are going through.
The short answer is, you gotta do some work, bitches. Hard work plowing those fields of our mind so we can harvest some badass crops to share with our community. This year, I implore you to take on the energy of the Ox in this new Age of Aquarius. Feet firmly in the ground, head in the cosmos understanding our oneness. From the confines of your own mind to the energy of your family and your community, you must work at becoming that which you hope to see in the world. The Rat forced isolation on us so that we could observe our own patterns and discover the things that are important to us and brought many things to light that have not serving you or your community. This awareness requires radical honesty. Understanding what is not working helps us in manifesting something new…and the energy out there, while chaotic, is ripe for creativity.
Instead of the usual New Year’s Resolutions, consider the following:
What did you learn in 2020?
What were the prevalent emotions you felt?
What good did you find about yourself and others?
What matters most to you now?
What do you hope for in 2021 that is different from other years?
How will you better serve your community in 2021?
If you remember what matters most to you and you bring love, peace and compassionate awareness to your thoughts and relationships, you will begin to awaken to the elevated shifts that are happening. I didn’t say it was easy, but nothing good ever is easy. We humans are a silly species; we need to suffer a little to come to awareness.
No matter where you are in your personal journey - emotionally, mentally or spiritually – there is one common denominator…you are here right now for a reason and you are exactly where you’re supposed to be. Please sit with this question over the next few days:
Why was my life Divinely orchestrated to bring me to exactly where I am right now during this moment in time?
Doesn’t matter if you feel satisfied with life or not; you are exactly where you’re supposed to be today. While I know it’s a time of uncertainty, that also makes it a time of creativity and innovation. What a time to be alive!
So, here’s your assignment for the Lunar New Year in the Age of Aquarius:
Take a look back at 2020 and make a list of all the things that were GOOD and you deem positive. Be grateful for everything you list and ask yourself the hidden messages for why you were given those gifts. Now make a list of all the challenges, disappointments and negative things that happened to you in 2020. Do the same thing – try to understand why you were being shown those things. Take a long, hard look at your negative list and try to find good things that came from those encounters. Be grateful for the lessons given to you and search for opportunities that can be discovered amongst the ashes. Good things always come from our greatest trials…and we would never appreciate the good stuff without having felt the negative. This form of gracious wisdom is what stops us from feeling like victims.
Quiet your mind and activate your spirit. Develop a relationship with the Divine…God…Nature…. develop a relationship with something more loving and compassionate than the same old voices in your head. Shut off the noise outside and inside your head even for just a few minutes a day. When you start seeing the Divine in the connection between you and everything, you start elevating your state of consciousness. You start realizing you could never be alone, because you are an intricate part of the entire system.
Now, try to manifest what you want this year by writing a journal entry dated one year from today, but written like it’s the present. Remember the assignment from our first series of classes together? In this entry, you are to write of all the things you want to attract into your life…Imagine it. Write it. Visualize you having it. FEEL it. Example:
Dear Diary, Today is February 10, 2022 and I have never been happier. I still am unsure with my next steps in life, but I feel good here and now. I feel fulfilled. I am grateful. I have faith that I will be guided to what’s in my highest and best. I know what makes me happy. My marriage has that old spark in it. We and I don’t fight over the same stuff anymore. I used to argue so much just to make a point, but now I see that was just ego. I feel a higher connection between us….While I lost my job in 2020 and I was lost, upset and worried, it made me go out of my comfort zone and I have a new job now that doesn’t make me feel so stressed and I love going to work every day and feel an incredible bond to my work community….I have decided to forgive my mother after all these years. While she may not have been the best mom growing up, I realize it’s my responsibility to myself to let that shit go, as it no longer serves me. I am done feeling like a victimized child. I understand I chose her and she did the best she could, considering her circumstance and level of awareness. I feel lighter and I know she does also….
Get the idea? You write as if it’s a year from now and talk of all the successes and changes you’ve brought to your life. The point of this exercise is to:
figure out what you want.
figure out how you want to feel when you get it
start attracting to you the things you want to feel in your life.
Your goal for the year of the Ox is to be aware of what you want for yourself and your community, to feel the connection to the whole and to do the work getting there with honesty and integrity towards yourself and others.
I leave you for now with this thought…
What do you want?
Do you want to be loved? Then love. Do you want to be trusted? Trust. Do you want to neutralise your enemies? Forgive them. Do you want to be heard? Then listen.
To be understood, seek to understand.
To receive, be grateful.
To make beauty flourish, actively seek beauty in your life, regardless of your circumstances.
When we bridge life’s exquisite polarities, we become enlightened.
Remember that we are the LIGHTWORKERS!!
The world is shifting fast and it’s time to adjust your view of the oncoming horizon as you ride through this new terrain. We have a great opportunity to leave the past behind and move even more quickly toward a more connected and enlightened world.
Sending you all crazy amounts of love & light,
Ali
