Who Am I? Mother and Child, Matter and Spirit.

The keynote for our meditation work in Virgo is I am the mother and the child. I, God, I, matter am. One of the things immediately noticeable in this keynote is the focus on I. Pondering the eternal question, Who am I?, in the light of Virgo, leads to the affirmation: I am the mother and the child. I, God, I, matter am.

What might this mean for each one of us as individuals – for you and for me as we approach the mystery of the question Who am I? So often the ‘I ‘ word is used loosely, casually and with little reflection. Even in our private most intimate thoughts there can be an automatic sense of ‘I’ as the personal self. So when we think, I believe …; I want … I like …; it is in my interest to … there is a tendency to mean I the personality believe, want etc. And in esoteric groups it can happen (not necessarily that it does happen, or always happens) that this human, incarnated ‘I’, this personality is quite inappropriately considered to be a problem, or a burden.

Virgo leads us to ask how conscious are we of the fullness of who I am? How often, even in our most serious reflections, do we truly think of ourselves as a dynamic, shifting mix of our Christ nature and all of the substance of our personal identity? It is easy to have ideas and theories about the Christ that dwells within us – yet too often these ideas exist somehow apart from the way we think about our identity and ourselves. One of the key thoughts in Virgo is that this substance of our humanity, this personality, gives us exactly the right nexus of energies needed to nourish the in-dwelling Christ. Our personality gives the soul all the food and support required as the soul prepares to emerge fully into the human world – to transform the human world. The magical process of gestation, leading to labor and an eventual birth is taking place in us and through us – just as it is taking place in the human community, the collective.

Pondering the question who am I?, leads into a reflection on evolution. The real imaginative living sense of self has changed through time and through cultures. It sometimes seems that the modern Western notion of self is of a limited, shallow, superficial, even sentimental, ‘what you see is what you get’ sort of selfhood: personality, with muted light and shadow, but without solar fire, without the mystery of eternity, without any core of divinity, of limitless love, without any sense of ashramic group identity or purpose or of active participation in the birthing of a new humanity; without archetype of Warrior, Priest Magician or Healer.

In ancient times we would probably have shared in an instinctual sense of the Divine Self. It would have been an almost unconscious part of our identity. Today we are at a crossroads – after a long cycle in which the power of the separated individual has been growing in potency, a new sense of Self is emerging and accompanying this, a whole new understanding of the feminine is on the rise.

In our meditation work together we will be linking into a global field of mind and heart that includes individuals and groups living on every part of the radiant surface of the earth. The first intuitive and imaginative exercise in the meditation is to imagine ourselves (ourselves as soul and personality, aligned) centered within this group of meditators – to identify ourselves with the global field of mind and heart in such a way that throughout the meditation we are thinking imaginatively as a cell within this concentrated global field of consciousness. We can imagine this entire group field approaching Higher Sources of Wisdom and Lighted Compassion with the clear intention to serve the Vision and the Plan for humanity held in the Lighted Mind of these Higher Beings. Our entire group purpose is to be of use in the planned emergence, the birthing, of a richer, truer, more balanced and harmonious sense of Self.

Together, as one mind, can we imaginatively see the Virgo energies, the Virgin Mother herself in all her radiance, transforming the human sense of identity? It is said that we are in the later stages, the eighth month, of the gestation of the new human being, the new self. So right now, in our historical time, it is possible to imagine a human identity that affirms, knows and is true to both its human and its divine nature. We can imagine this as part of our personal destiny in this life – and as a part of the destiny of all deep thinkers and of all who seek to be of service at this time. Imagine a time in the future when historians of the psyche will look back to the decades of the 2010’s and the 2020’s and comment on an emerging redefinition of self, a balancing between feminine and masculine, and a new understanding of the personality as a vehicle for the expression of our higher soul potentials.

I am one with my group brothers, and all that I have is theirs.

May the love which is in my soul pour forth to them.

May the strength which is in me lift and aid them.

May the thoughts which my soul creates reach and encourage them.

In the Virgo keynote we have the image of the Mother with the yet to be born child embedded in her womb. The Mother symbolizes the earth itself and our own personal earth - our humanness, the elements of body, subtle body, emotions and mind that make up our individual personalities. The yet to be born child represents the Christ within us, the hope of glory. The Mother provides all the nourishment needed for the embryonic Christ to fulfill its mission, pass through the traumatic events of labor and be born into the world where it can be seen, can be fully present and can radiate its energies through the vehicle of the personality.

The Mother is like the rich humus of the soil, the wonderfully fertile dirt, into which the soul can push down its roots – fully enter into the earth and in the dark, damp conditions beneath the ground draw all the nourishment that is needed to emerge into the light of external reality. From a Virgo perspective this is the meaning of time, of history – both in a personal sense and in a collective sense. Our humanness and our immersion in time provides all the ingredients needed by the soul to emerge in the world, with human face, eyes, heart, head and feet.

One of the key thoughts for me here is that we so often think of spiritual work as the work that we have do as personalities – working from outside in. It can be a struggle. We too often forget the work that the Soul is doing from inside out. As the embryo grows within the womb it becomes stronger, more present to the mother, more a real part of the being of the Mother. And so we are given this image of Virgo as the experience of the sustaining will of the Mother in close association with the dynamic will of the Christ Child. [Esoteric Astrology, p. 627]. That’s quite a thought – that for all of us, in our individual journeys through life, we hold within us this sustaining will of the Mother AND an associated dynamic will of the Christ Child. We sometimes forget that dynamic will part of the picture.

For cycles of incarnation, birth, experience, and death; followed by birth, experience, and death, the Soul enters into the world of the separated self, in time passing through a culminating Leo experience as a potent individual, self-aware as a personality and with a facility to navigate and manipulate the human world, to appear to be a master of the human world, a high achiever, a leader. This is all a part of the souls plan for evolution.

On the path the soul moves on from Leo into the Virgo experience. The powerful ego is now very aware of the hidden light within, knowing that light to be the kernel, the core, the essence of selfhood. In Virgo I discover that I am not who I thought I was – in fact in my heart of hearts I am something much greater, a being of universal significance. Yet in Virgo I also understand that this Universal Me is destined to be my ruler – the One who thinks and who directs action. The Hidden Christ will be born into the light of the external manifested world – and my purpose begins to be understood as caring for this hidden part of myself, listening to it, acknowledging its presence.

Imagine this Virgo sense of self, the Mother and the embryonic child in symbiotic relationship. Imagine what it means for our time. Think, for example, about so much of the national conversation during this important year in the life of the United States – during a year of enormous spiritual significance for humanity and the planet as a whole (the Mayan calendar, the Venus transit, the Festival Week of the New Group of World Servers culminating in the Capricorn full moon) the peoples of the United States are engaged in a presidential election, discriminating between two significantly different visions of the future and two significantly different types of leadership. Looking through the Virgo lens perhaps we can imagine the soul of the nation being nurtured through the outer process of choosing between two visions of the future. Perhaps we might see the vast community of deep thinkers in the nation moving beyond the simplistic and manipulated rhetoric of the campaigns to do their own thinking about the best way forward for the nation in its path towards right (or rather better) human relations. The one thing the Virgo lens makes us consider is that in the midst of all the noise of an election, all the glamour and manipulation – the soul of the nation is playing an active and dynamic role. Remember the dynamic will of the Christ child in association with the sustaining will of the Mother. As the debates unfold, and as we follow the discussion from those few commentators (from the left and the right) who are actually independent thinkers and who have a transparent concern for the good of the nation and the good of the whole – we might be imaginatively open to the embryo of the Christ child, the soul of the nation, figuratively in the eighth month of the mother’s pregnancy, preparing for labor and ultimately for birth.

If we are to truly understand our time, as the period immediately preceding labor and birth of the Christ, and the emergence of Aquarius as the dominant note of the world, we need to do some serious thinking. When the mother is eight months pregnant the baby is moving around inside the womb independently (even if rather restricted by the enclosed environment). The eyes are closed when the baby is sleeping and open when awake. Most of the body organs, except for the lungs, are developed. The electrical impulses in the brain are firing, the development of the brain proceeds rapidly and the baby will be getting into the position it needs to be in for birth. This may physically be a hugely uncomfortable time for the mother in her pregnancy because the yet to be born baby is so strongly present.

So this is how we might begin to think of the human community at this time, in 2012? We need to look for the signs of the soul in human thinking and planning – it will no doubt be the source of huge discomfort and stress in all the affairs of the world but it will be developing its distinctive character and all its thought forms will be there, just behind the surface of the outer events. It’s not difficult to imagine that this is exactly what is happening now in every field of activity. The fundamental understanding of interdependence and wholeness is now so strong –just below the surface, on the verge of breaking out into the dominant paradigm of professions, government, social movements, and the arts. We know that the actual birthing requires a period of painful labor – that period has not yet arrived. But the dynamic will of the Christ and the sustaining will of the Mother are in sync – they are joined. And the beauty of this image is that this is all happening in our time – during the period when our souls have chosen for us to be in incarnation.

The idea that the paradigm of wholeness and interdependence is in gestation, and approaching the final days of pregnancy before emerging into the birthing of a new civilization is very much an idea for this time and this year, 2012. There is a widespread popular image of 2012 as a very special year, drawing particularly on interpretations of the Mayan calendar. Alice Bailey’s presentation of the Ageless Wisdom gives some insight on this. Every seven years a special tide of Capricornian influences flows into the field of the collective mind and heart of humanity. This is more than the regular December flow of Capricorn energies. On the seven year cycle energies of Capricorn are augmented by forces [pouring in] from a still greater constellation. Nothing is said about this greater constellation other than that it conditions and overshadows the entire zodiac of constellations influencing life and events on the earth.

In December 1935, when the Tibetan referred to this Capricorn overshadowing in Alice Bailey’s book, Esoteric Psychology Vol II, we are told that the energies pouring in from the greater constellation gave a huge impetus to the work of the New Group of World Servers – leading to a marked tendency to goodwill … in every nation and every group. DK goes on to describe how this overshadowing constellation produces a week of group impact every seven years from December 21 to 28 – and he goes on to comment that if the full moon should occur during this week, the opportunity will be most significant.

This year, 2012, is such a year – seven years on from the last festival Week of the New Group of World Servers, and with the added potency of a Capricorn full moon, which this year will be on December 28. So that makes us sit up and take notice that all of our work in group service, inner and outer, during this year is helping to prepare the field of the New Group of World Servers for an unusual and highly significant inflow of energies. And in Virgo we cannot help but consider this in terms of the figurative movement of the Christ child, down the birth canal in preparation for labor.

Esoteric thinking in the light of such imagery does not mean that we are looking for sensational events or sudden changes in the world signifying this movement. Rather that the process of history, the process of a new civilization of wholeness emerging, can be expected to speed up. This may happen in unexpected and unforeseen ways. The main thing is that consciousness will be stimulated, and that we can expect the tendency to goodwill in all nations and in all serving groups to be empowered. So we can imagine groups active in such fields as environmental awareness or poverty reduction or bridging between science and spirituality clarifying their mission, streamlining their organization, finding the funds needed to develop particular campaigns etc. as a result of the energies flowing in during the Festival Week. We might also be on the lookout for breakthroughs in 2013 in some of the negotiations underway in the United Nations around such issues as climate change and the post Millennium Development Goals development agenda.

Yet we can also take heart from some of the extraordinary mobilizations of energy around the December Festival Week time and the important period between now and the Week in December. Anyone on the internet will probably be familiar with the Summer of Peace campaign where leading servers from around the world are speaking on goodwill issues to tens of thousands of listeners, often speaking profoundly and with deep insight into the shift taking place in consciousness. The International Day of Peace on the solstice, September 21st is a focus for countless groups with global meditation vigils, the noon time minute of silence and other activities to encourage folk to do something, take action, to improve the quality of relationships in their neighborhood. This is surely significant. A number of campaigns are culminating in celebration of a Global Birth day on December 22 2012: aiming to register 100 million signatures agreeing to join in co-creating the birth of a “Universal humanity” and guiding our earth community “into its next evolutionary stage”.

There is much taking place in the inner life of humanity as well as the outer life. In Virgo we affirm that the outer nurtures the inner, the deeper and more fundamental changes in values and attitudes.

So may it be and so may we do our part.

FESTIVAL OF VIRGO
New York, August 30, 2012
Steve Nation