1st September 2016: Solar Eclipse in 10th degree of Virgo at 9:04 a.m. UT
From Darkness Into Light
By
Sarah Varcas
This solar eclipse highlights the adventure of living in the material world whilst embracing the unseen realms of energy and essence. This is the path of the everyday mystic who lives in communion with the divine whilst scrubbing the floor and fingernails, paying bills, earning a wage and putting out the rubbish. However we experience this eclipse at a personal level, the fundamental message will be the same: we can neither respond solely in a pragmatic, earthbound manner, nor can we respond only as transcendent spirit devoid of connection to the everyday world. It challenges us to acknowledge and honour spiritual truth in the midst of everyday life, embodying its presence and manifesting its fruit. In essence, it reminds us that truth is a vibration, an energy, a rectifying force that realigns us to the whole.
If we’re fond of ‘spiritual-bypassing’: skirting around the messiness of life to more quickly abide in transcendent bliss, this eclipse will come as something of a wake-up call! We are not incarnate by mistake, doomed to spend a lifetime avoiding what we essentially are whilst aspiring to dwell on a more desirable plane! Our physicality is a core part of our humanity and our path is one of balancing it with our spirituality, emotionality and intellect, not favouring one aspect over another. If, however, our orientation is towards the rational, seeking always certainty, fearing paradox and refusing to consider anything beyond facts and figures, we may also be in for an interesting time! Whatever our imbalance, wherever we favour one way of being to the detriment of another, the unwelcome consequences of doing so will soon become abundantly clear!
And yet there lives at the very heart of this message a profound paradox, for this eclipse speaks also of our inherent perfection no matter who, what or where we are. Balancing this abiding truth with the relative world in which we live can seem impossible, which it is if we try to think our way through it. But opening to the possibility that we are both perfectly formed and simultaneously on a path of refinement allows the veils of ignorance and misunderstanding to fall away, revealing the truth at the heart of paradox. As the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh observes, ‘..the work of rebuilding may take thousands of lifetimes, but it has already been completed just that long ago’.
It is time to see our personal and collective history for what it is, apart from the stories we weave around it. If we struggle to heal a painful past or let go of old hurts that keep us stuck, this eclipse helps us cut the ties that bind. Forgiveness can be a lengthy process of adjustment and restitution. But even for those at the very beginning of that journey, this eclipse offers some respite from the pain of open wounds and fractured souls. It reminds us that ultimately there is nothing to forgive, even as relatively there is so very much. We live in both dimensions, processing the grit of the human realm whilst drawing upon the peace of the absolute: the ultimate paradox which beats at the heart of these changing and challenging times.
As the Sun’s brilliance is temporarily obscured we meet ourselves in our unique darkness, to love ourselves into the light. We cannot have one without the other: day without night, right without left, you without me. Opposites make the world go around and contradiction is woven through the very fabric of our lives. At this eclipse we become both darker and brighter in equal measure, for such is this paradoxical and forever mysterious life….
Sarah Varcas