Just as we’re entering Pisces season (the Sun slipped into Pisces Monday), we have a Full Moon in Virgo. The Pisces-Virgo polarity is about habits, routines, day-to-day and moment-by-moment shifts that can ground magic and revelation into ordinary life.
It’s one thing to go off and meditate for days on end, or to journey with plant medicine, or to fall in love, or to experience wonder on a mountaintop. In those moments we may sense the sacred, we may remember our interconnectedness, we may glimpse reality beyond the illusion of ego and conditioning. But then, for many of us, we come down from the mountain to our jobs, our chores, the news, the traffic, and forget that moment of bliss.
We forget that all is one, and that reality is love. We fall back into the lie that we are separate and have to compete for limited resources. We struggle and fight and power through. We fall back into shame and doubt and cynicism and anxiety.
The vision on the mountain top is Pisces: knowing the truth of love and oneness, but without the wherewithal to integrate that into daily life. The daily grind is Virgo cut-off from its Pisces polarity. To integrate them is to live in wonder while folding the socks, to remember our interconnectedness while doing our taxes, to soften into the moment wherever we are.
Virgo loves routines, and practices, so what little shifts can we make in our everyday lives, that will bring us more access to the divine?
As for me, I used to practice yoga in the evenings. But I found that by that time, I’d gotten caught up in the stress of daily life; distracted by the internet, tense from the habitual circling of thoughts, tired from misusing my energy. Yoga had become a way of undoing the damage. I’ve just recently started practicing in the mornings instead; so that I can start the day off in a state of calm, so that I can clear the mind, and soften the body before everything else. I’m also wanting to move more in general, take more regular stretch breaks, walk more, wiggle, dance, shake, whatever it takes, to release the tension, be in the body, breath, and feel.
There are many little shifts that we can make that ripple into big effects. Maybe it’s less coffee, or more friendship. Maybe it’s no screens before bed, or more gratitude. Only you know what shifts will bring more magic into your life.
The Pisces-Virgo axis also signifies cleaning house--cleaning up our thoughts, organizing our hard-drive, sweeping out the cobwebs--as a practice that clears out the clutter in the heart and brings us closer to our essence. Virgo: take inventory of your thought patterns; keep a critical eye; question yourself. Pisces: love yourself completely; forgive yourself; release those patterns that no longer serve.
We’ve all been through the wringer. Over lifetimes, we’ve been lied to and manipulated and hurt and abused. We didn’t receive the love and care and nurturance we needed. And we developed all kinds of ways of coping. Some of those ways have meant that we in turn have hurt others, or that we haven’t lived up to our potential, or that we’ve settled into negativity.
It’s a devastating cycle that began before history and will have no end unless we learn to forgive; and forgiveness begins when we forgive ourselves. When we see that we were doing the best we could, and that we are deserving of love; when we see that we are divine beings, and of this Cosmos, not in it.
Isn’t it incredible that the cosmos created us? That these bodies exist? Isn’t life miraculous when we stop to consider it? Look at what Earth creates. Look at existence, at the stars and the planets and the flowers and the forests and the creatures. And we think we are so special as to be guilty? What egos we have. We are just souls among souls, among all the other creatures and beings in existence, that make up this cosmos. Let go, child. Remember that you are of this cosmos too. That you aren’t over and above it. Let go. Surrender to what is and you will know love.