Join us for Cosmic Fire Meditation and Loving Kindness Meditation This Weekend!
Welcome to Satya Center’s Libra Solar Festival, Aries Penumbral Eclipse Full Moon 2013 Cosmic Weather Forecast, brought to you by your Editors, Curtis Lang with Jane Sherry.
The Full Moon Penumbral Eclipse occurs Friday, October 18, at 7:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time, or 4:35 PM West Coast time at 25° 45’ of Aries, opposed by the Sun at 25° 45’ of Libra.
Jane and I would like to also wish you Happy Halloween, Samhain and Diwali! Pagan, earth-centered religions see the Divine manifest in Nature and all of Creation, believe in the concept of immanence (the Goddess/God within), believe in the spirit which resides in all things seen and unseen and in unending cycles of birth, growth, death and renewal. These three late October/early November spiritual festivals celebrate the sacred cycles of the seasons, of the years, of human life and death.
Today Jane and I are recalling the last newsletter, which focused on world events that correlate to the Cosmic Weather Patterns dominating the Twenty-Teens.
Last month we talked about how the recurring Grand Cardinal Cross dominating the sky this year could trigger scary events related to the Fukushima disaster, the problems in the US political system that threaten global financial stability, and the conflict in Syria.
And in that newsletter I mentioned that the Grand Cardinal Cross tends to magnify the threat and fear level surrounding difficult issues that require our attention. It is up to us to use our discernment to understand the big picture aspects of these various ongoing crises, and thus to master our own fears and reactive emotional responses to events in our world.
We continue to believe that understanding these events and how they relate to Cosmic Weather patterns will help us all to be of maximum service in the world and for one another during this difficult time -- the transition from the Piscean/Industrial Age of Cheap Hydrocarbons to the Aquarian/Post-Industrial Age of Zero Gashouse Emissions.
In the Aquarian Age we are entering, it is we the people who will assume leadership and show the way forward.
We cannot count on our intellectually, spiritually and emotionally bankrupt political and corporate leaders in America and in other countries around the world to safely shepherd humanity into the New Age.
It’s a matter of self-interest. These people are far from stupid. They have foreseen the difficulties humanity is now encountering for many years.
But individual members of existing elites are profiting so handsomely from the current regime -- the status quo of maximum fossil-fuel consumption, turbo-charged capitalism, and governance by the ultra-rich and their celebrity courtiers – that it is literally unthinkable for them to become, in effect, class traitors, and implement the real reforms that are needed.
Jane and I are delighted that today, as we approach this Full Moon Eclipse in Aries, the major crises we highlighted last month are no longer a matter of news headlines around the world.
The US government has re-opened, and will pay its bills. However there is no guarantee a similar political impasse will not arise over the next several months, as budget politics continues to shape the news in America.
Typhoon Wipha, which killed 17 people in the Greater Tokyo area, and passed over the Fukushima nuclear power plants yesterday, did not cause a critical systems failure, although Tepco released many tens of tons of irradiated water into the Pacific.
Another typhoon is on the same track and due to hit Japan next week. Let's join together this weekend to send some love and light to Japan. Let's make it our intent that the damage inflicted by the incoming typhoon should be minimized as much as possible, especially at Fukushima.
Jane has made a beautiful free Earth Healing for Japan Talisman for you, which you see on this page. Just click on the link to download your own copy and print it out to put on your altar. Together we'll meditate upon this image, and send love and light to Japan for the healing of the Japanese people, the Earth and the Pacific Ocean.
And UN inspectors are making good progress in Syria.
As I mentioned in last month’s newsletter, these areas of crisis, which are still simmering on the back-burner this month, could be triggered by more Grand Cardinal Cross activity over the next several months, culminating in a spring hot-spot when Mars triggers the activity of the Grand Cardinal Cross in a most energetic fashion.
But for now we have a break from the atmosphere of pending emergency that seemed to pervade the ethers last Full Moon.
Jane and I would like to focus on the spiritual aspects of this month’s Full Moon Cosmic Weather Forecast.
We urge you all to join us in meditation or prayer, and your own favorite spiritual practices this weekend, so that we may all strengthen ourselves energetically, physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually for our journey into a New Age infused with Love and Light.
Cosmic Weather Forecast
This weekend is the Aries Full Moon Festival of 2013. This is a fire moon, since the sign of the Ram is ruled by the planet Mars. This weekend there is a penumbral lunar eclipse.
This means that the Full Moon will pass through the outer, relatively bright rim of the Earth’s shadow. The effect is subtle, and most observers will see only a slight darkening of the southern side of the Moon.
The penumbral eclipse effect will be visible from around 7:51 PM Eastern time on Friday October 18, to around 11:00 PM Eastern time, a total of nearly four hours. That’s from 4:51 PM until 8:50 PM Pacific time this Friday. Scientists say that 76.5% of the lunar disk will be occluded by the penumbra at maximum eclipse.
This weekend at the time of the Full Moon Eclipse, the Sun, Moon and Jupiter form a Cardinal T-Square, while Uranus and Pluto are also squared off in Cardinal Signs.
The recurring Cardinal T-Squares and Cardinal Cross configurations in the current series of extremely potent world-altering outer planet aspects have coincided with the current global financial crisis, now in its fifth year, with wars and rumors of possible wars, with extreme climate events, and with rising discontent around the world, as people in nation after nation around the world lose trust in their leaders. These difficult aspects will wax and wane over the next several years before they dissipate.
We can expect that this Full Moon Penumbral Eclipse in the Cardinal sign of Aries will pump up the tense, conflicted energy that is being unleashed by these long-term Cosmic Weather Patterns.
However there are also several potent Trine aspects including Sun trine Neptune, Mercury trine Jupiter, and Venus trine Uranus. These harmonious aspects indicate ease and grace, and promise that if we make an effort to connect with our spiritual guidance we will find we have the strength, discernment, will and intuitive awareness we need to navigate through the stellar minefield that we see mirrored around us in the economic, political and environmental crises unfolding simultaneously on Planet Earth today.
On an individual and on a collective basis, humanity in the 21st century is called upon to establish right human relations, which are governed by the sign of Libra, which is ruled by the planet Venus and symbolized by the woman holding the scales of Justice.
On this potent full moon eclipse the Sun in Libra is opposite the moon in Aries. Aries is the sign of the individual and of individuation, ruled by Mars and symbolized by the Ram.
This is a week of Celestial oppositions.
The Aries-driven needs and desires of the individual intent upon unfolding his or her unique personality and attaining the goals set by the personality for this lifetime come into conflict with the trans-personal realm of Libra governed relationships.
Libra catalyzes the loving wisdom that calls forth compassionate compromise and calls for shared intent to manifest a balanced give and take that characterizes right human relations.
Right human relations rely upon the attainment and maintenance of a dynamic equilibrium between the parties in a relationship.
For individuals, this means achieving a dynamic balance between the narrowly conceived needs and desires of the egoistic personality and the trans-personal viewpoint of the Higher Mind and Higher Self, which often puts the needs of suffering humanity above the interests of the individual.
For intimate relationships, including family, loved ones, and those we consider part of our “tribe”, our self-selected family so to speak, right human relations means staying centered in a dynamic equilibrium characterized by a balanced exchange of energies between individuals.
In terms of the human collective, right human relations are achieved when nations, classes, races, and religions adhere to standards of mutual respect and equity, honor basic human rights, and work together to achieve goals that are beneficial for the entirety of humanity.
The Libra Solar Festival is the ideal time for all spiritual practices designed to foster right human relations.
On the individual level, the Libra Solar Festival and Aries Full Moon offer an opportunity to balance the conflicting drives represented by the Warrior God Aries and the Libran Lady of Justice.
This weekend is a great time to meditate with the intention that we allow the Higher Self and Higher Mind greater access to our everyday consciousness, providing us with the inner vision that we need to understand the limitations of our own egoistic personalities, and the grace and guidance to transcend those limitations through loving wisdom applied to all our worldly affairs.
This is a great weekend to perform a loving-kindness meditation designed to transmit loving energies to suffering humanity, and to those people best placed to advance the cause of peace, human freedom and human rights around the world-- using Reiki or crystals to enhance the energy being radiated by the meditator.
Libra Solar Festival Loving Kindness Meditation
The recognition of the universality of human suffering is the beginning of compassion. But what can we do about this suffering?
First, focus on your compassionate heart, for this is the keystone of all true awakening.
Acknowledge the suffering of our parents, our family, our friends, our loved ones, our co-workers, who may be having a difficult time this year, and consider the suffering of the millions in the world who do not have food or shelter or medicine or the love they need to survive and thrive in the world.
Our natural response is to sincerely desire that this suffering should end.
Here is a meditation exercise you can do to stimulate the feeling of compassion and to send healing energy to suffering humanity.
If you are a Reiki practitioner, turn on your Reiki energy. Feel Reiki flowing from your hands.
If you have a crystal you use to receive and transmit Universal Life Force Energy, prepare that crystal for your meditation and hold it in your hand.
Relax the mind, center the consciousness, focus on the eternal now, this precious moment, the only moment in which we live.
Relax the body and become aware of the wrinkles in your forehead relaxing.
Become aware of the muscles in your shoulders and back relaxing.
Become aware of your breath. Focus on your breath.
On the inbreath, feel the breath entering the nostrils, passing across the roof of the palate and down into the lungs, filling the lungs with refreshing life force energy.
On the outbreath, feel the breath passing across the roof of the mouth and out through the nostrils.
Feel the relaxation in your solar plexus as you take another refreshing breath.
Reflect on this beautiful moment. Know that this beautiful moment is enough.
Connect with the Source of Universal Life Force Energy and turn your inner vision toward the hara center just below your belly button where you store Universal Life Force Energy, prana, or chi.
Visualize the Source of Universal Life Force Energy as a great ball of fire, a Celestial Sun, hovering above your head. Now, see the Universal Life Force Energy streaming down from this Divine Source into your own being.
Visualize this energy pouring into your crown chakra. Feel the warmth of the Celestial Sun on your head, and feel the warmth spread down across your forehead, your cheeks and into your neck and shoulders, streaming into your arms and down into your hands, until you can feel the energy tingling in your fingertips.
Allow this warm, nurturing energy to fill your entire body, as if your body were an empty vessel. With your mind’s eye you can see the energy filling your body, and you can feel the warmth streaming down through your chest and stomach, filling your heart with warmth, light and love, warming and healing your entire body along the way.
You feel the warmth and see the energy streaming into your hips, and down into your legs, pouring all the way into your feet, until you feel the warm brightness reach all the way into your toes.
Now visualize a person you know – perhaps the person you talked to on the telephone most recently, or whom you saw most recently at work or at home.
Feel the limitless stream of Universal Life Force Energy energy which has filled your being begin to overflow your heart and stream forth from your hands.
Visualize a golden stream of Universal Life Force Energy passing from your hands and your heart to the place where your reality intersects with this person. See that golden light connecting with that intersection, which is the place where your relationship resides, and fill that intersection between you with warm, healing energy.
Now visualize your best friend. Feel the limitless Universal Life Force Energy which has filled your being begin to overflow your heart and stream forth from your hands.
Visualize a golden stream of Universal Life Force Energy passing from your hands and your heart to your best friend. See that golden light connecting to the place where your reality intersects with this close friend. See that golden light connecting with that intersection, which is the place where your relationship resides, and fill that intersection between you with warm, healing energy.
Now visualize your family and friends, gathered in a group around you. Feel the limitless Universal Life Force Energy which has filled your being begin to overflow your heart and stream forth from your hands.
Visualize a golden stream of Universal Life Force Energy passing from your hands and your heart to the place where your reality intersects with these friends and loved ones. See that golden light connecting with that intersection, which is the place where your relationship resides, and fill that intersection between you with warm, healing energy.
Now visualize an individual with whom you have been having difficulties. Someone who rubs you the wrong way, someone with whom you seem to have difficulty communicating, someone who seems to see the world totally differently from the way you see the world. Perhaps this is someone with whom you have quarrels, or even outright fights.
Imagine that this person is sitting next to you. Now imagine that this person is interacting with your Spiritual Teacher. You notice that your teacher can relate to them without conflict. Imagine that this difficult person is relating to their own friends and loved ones. Notice that they have no difficulty relating to these individuals. This is a clue to you that the difficulty in relating does not lie in the other, difficult individual, but rather in your own being. Allow that realization to sink into your mind, and rest with this new knowing.
Feel the limitless Universal Life Force Energy which has filled your being begin to overflow your heart and stream forth from your hands.
Now visualize a golden stream of Universal Life Force Energy passing from your hands and your heart to the place where your reality intersects with this difficult person. See that golden light connecting with that intersection, which is the place where your relationship resides, and fill that intersection between you with warm, healing energy.
Now visualize the entire world, filled with individuals who are all suffering from their own difficulties, their own wounds, their own fears, anger, unfulfilled desires, jealousy, impatience, and alienation. Imagine the three billion people who do not have enough to eat, or a place to live today.
Feel the limitless Universal Life Force Energy which has filled your being begin to overflow your heart and stream forth from your hands and go out to those who are suffering.
Visualize Universal Life Force Energy streaming forth from the Radiant Sun above your head. See this luminous, warm, healing energy stream forth, connecting with all those who suffer – with all of humanity. Allow this Universal Life Force Energy to pour forth from your heart, your hands and your mind into the world around you, enfolding those who are suffering in a stream of healing light.
Hold this image as long as you feel comfortable and simply feel the energy exchange as it continues.
Aries Full Moon Festival – Invoking Cosmic Fire
This weekend is an Aries Full Moon Festival featuring a display of subtle energies that will magnify the effects of this Full Moon in all three worlds, physical, etheric, and astral.
This weekend it is appropriate for us to contemplate the power of Cosmic Fire and to perform a Cosmic Fire Invocation to release anger and bring more love and light into our lives!
Elemental or Cosmic Fire is known by many names in many traditions around the globe.
In the Hindu pantheon, Agni is the God of Cosmic Fire.
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Agni, Hindu God of Fire with his Wife, Swaha |
“Agni is satya, true in his being;” explains Sri Aurobindo in his masterful treatise entitled The Secret of the Veda (p.62). “perfect possession of his own truth and the essential truth of things gives him the power to apply it perfectly in all acts and movements of force.”
“It is repeatedly said that the gods have established Agni as the immortal in mortals, the divine power in man, the energy of fulfillment through which they do their work in man. It is this work which is symbolized by the sacrifice,” Sri Aurobindo continues.
“The importance of the sacrificial fire in the outward ritual corresponds to the importance of the inward force of unified Light and Power in the inward rite by which there is communication and interchange between the mortal and the Immortal,” Sri Aurobindo informs us.
“It is a continual self-offering of the human to the divine and a continual descent of the divine into the human which seems to be symbolized in the sacrifice,” says Sri Aurobindo.
Agni is Cosmic Fire and Earthly Fire.
As above, so below.
Sun, lightning and hearth.
Starshine, Electromagnetic waves, Kundalini energy, and prana.
Agni is known for strength and brilliance.
Agni is the expression of Divine Will inspired by Divine Wisdom.
Agni makes possible communication between humanity and the Devas, the Deities who inhabit Higher Worlds.
In the outer world, the Devas correspond to the powers of Nature, Immortal in comparison with a human lifespan.
In the inner world, the Devas correspond to the archetypal powers of the human psyche, such as Will, Mind and so forth.
In the outer world, a Fire Sacrifice to Agni involves creating a fire in a sacred fire-pit, feeding the ascending golden flames with sacrificial offerings of golden ghee (clarified butter) poured downwards into the flaming pit from elongated ritual spoons, while reciting prayers and mantras to invoke Cosmic Forces, then placing offerings of fruit and flowers within the golden flames by hand while reciting the prayers of offering.
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| Fire Ceremony, photo by Jane Sherry |
In the inner world, a Fire Sacrifice to Agni involves the use of breathing exercises, meditation techniques, and visualization practices designed to increase the psycho-physical heat, enhance the flow of prana throughout the human bio-field organism, and ultimately raise the kundalini energy from the lower chakras to the crown chakra, an outcome, which, if attained, results in Enlightenment.
Inner meditations to Agni can also be very beneficial tools for clearing, cleansing, and purification. Agni meditations and visualizations can also raise our energies to higher frequencies and help us attain expanded states of consciousness as a result of the increased flow of Universal Life Force Energy we experience in body, mind, and aura.
Agni’s gift to humanity is to provide the flames which are the portal through which priests make offerings to all the Gods and Goddesses of the Hindu pantheon.
As the fire in the hearth, or ceremonial fire-pit, Agni is the mouth of the Devas, the carrier of offerings offered by humanity to the Gods and Goddesses that inhabit Higher Worlds.
Agni is the hotr, the High Priest who performs the offering, which is the sacrifice. Agni is the flame in which the sacrificial offering is consumed. Agni is the ascending flame which is the perfume of that offering, which reaches to the Devachanic Realms where Gods and Goddesses dwell in castles of light.
When we perform inner offerings during meditation and ritual visualizations, Agni is the Universal Life Force Energy that waxes during our practices.
Agni is the Cosmic Fire of Divine Source that burns within our hearts, and which, when invoked, transmutes the lead of our base emotions and negative thought-forms into the gold of Unity with Source.
Agni is the Cosmic Energy released through our spiritual practices, which ascends to Higher Worlds, where Beings of Light consume the subtle perfumes of human intent, human love, human aspiration and human joy.
These Great Beings of Light then release tremendous waves of energy of varying wavelengths – Universal Life Force Energy, chi, prana, kundalini energy, the purifying energy of the Violet Flame, and more – which descend upon those who perform the Self-Offerings here on planet Earth, infusing practitioners with a super-abundance of grace, guidance, motivation, insight, power and will forces as a result.
Cosmic Fire Invocation
This weekend we will connect with the element of fire presented by the Aries Full Moon by performing a fire meditation/visualization ritual that deals with two fiery emotions – anger and compassionate love.
In this ritual, we will visualize the Cosmic Flame within our hearts, offer up our negative emotions and thoughts to the Cosmic Flame, and ask that they be transmuted by Source into fresh new energies of a new creation.
We will offer up our love, gratitude, joy, trust, confidence and surrender to the Cosmic Flame that resides in Source, to Agni, God of Fire, and to the entire Pantheon of Deities in Devachanic Realms, and also to our Spiritual Guides and Teachers, those who dwell here in bodies and those who have Ascended.
Finally, we will visualize the angelic hosts, the elementals and the nature spirits and offer them our thanks for their work in helping to equilibrate, optimize and sustain this complex material Universe.
Place an offering of some flowers on your altar. Light a candle. If you like place a small vessel of pure water and a piece of fruit on your altar as well.
As you do so recite a prayer to your own favorite Fire Deity or Fire Angel, or to your Spiritual Teacher, asking that your intent be clear and that you receive the help you need to perform a successful meditation and offering – your sacrifice.
If you like, you may recite these four verses from the Hymn to Agni, the very first hymn in the Sacred Vedas, which poetically manifest the oldest written spiritual practices known to humanity still being performed today.
“May Agni, priest of the offering whose will towards action is that of the seer, who is true, most rich in varied inspiration, come, a god with the gods.
“The good that thou wilt create for the giver, that is that truth of thee O Angiras.”
“To thee day by day, O Agni, in the night and in the light, we by the thought come bearing our submission, To thee who shinest out from the sacrifices, guardian of the Truth and its illumination, increasing in thy own home.” – Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda (pp.59-60).
Take a seat in front of your altar. Be comfortable. Take a few moments to prepare.
Relaxing the mind, center the consciousness, focusing on the eternal now, this precious moment, the only moment in which we live.
Relax the body and become aware of the wrinkles in your forehead relaxing.
Become aware of the muscles in your shoulders and back relaxing.
Become aware of your breath.
Focus on your breath.
On the inbreath, feel the breath entering the nostrils, passing across the roof of the palate and down into the lungs, filling the lungs with refreshing life force energy.
On the outbreath, feel the breath passing across the roof the palate and out through the nostrils.
Feel the relaxation in your solar plexus as you take another refreshing breath.
Reflect on this beautiful moment.
Know that this beautiful moment is enough.
Repeat this practice until you feel deeply relaxed.
If you wish to metaphorically pour ghee on the inner fire of your devotional practice, you might want to take another few moments to perform another breathing exercise, known as Breath of Fire.
Sit upright on your cushion on the floor, and bring your attention to the spot on your abdomen just two finger-widths below the belly button.
With your mouth closed, breathe in and out through the nose, rhythmically, with equal time for inhalation and exhalation. Make each exhalation forceful and you’ll notice a natural tendency to inhale. Think of your breathing as bellows. You will notice as you do this, that your belly is pulled in as your breath releases and it expands upon the inhalation.
Repeat this procedure as rapidly as is comfortable for a period of approximately one minute.
Now it is time to state our intentions.
This weekend we wish to perform a Fire Sacrifice to release unwanted and negative emotions, mis-shapen thought-forms and karmic scripts fueling worn-out dramas in our lives.
This weekend we connect with the Wisdom Teachings of Vedic Masters of the Fire Sacrifice to guide us on this inner journey to healing and expanded consciousness.
This weekend we wish to invoke the Cosmic Fire – the Source Energy that infuses the Holographic Field that provides the underpinnings of material creation.
This weekend we wish to ask that this Cosmic Fire accept the gift of our offerings.
We wish to offer our negative emotions, stuck energy and mistaken mental maps of the world to the Cosmic Fire that all this may be alchemically transformed, composted by the Universe into fresh new energies suitable for new creations.
This Cosmic Fire exists as a Deity in Higher Worlds, and this Cosmic Fire exists as a Jewel in the Lotus within our Hearts.
We ask that Cosmic Fire accept these offerings, and we invite Cosmic Fire to further infuse our bodies, our minds, our hearts, and our auras with the psycho-physical heat and light in direct proportion to the energies which we have offered in our Cosmic Fire Sacrifice.
Now we visualize the Cosmic Flame within our hearts, as it appears to our inner vision which is attuned to the spiritual practice most congenial to us.
You might visualize a Three-Fold Violet Flame. You might visualize a Diamond of Fire.
You might visualize Agni, or another Deity you love. Agni has been described thus: Butter is his food, and his back is the color of butte