I want to turn to something Andy Warhol wrote,

which includes something Simone de Beauvoir wrote:

– ”When Simone de Beauvoir said “I’m reliving it, neutralizing it, and transforming it into an inoffensive past that I can keep in my heart without either disowning it or suffering from it. That’s not easy. It’s at once painful and poetic.”

Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, So what. That’s one of my favorite things to say. So what.” –

Our New Moon at 23 degrees Capricorn happens in the dark of the night between January 12th and 13th. It brings together our Solar (conscious) and Lunar (unconscious) energies. It marries them to Pluto, to compulsion, to finality, to the bottom line, to a state which we do not come back from.

This is drastic, drastic energy, as when lightning strikes a power plant, or a volcano eruption, and it happens in the dark. It’s the seed of it, the spark…

You may well wonder who called for this? Is it possible to send it back??

Who ever calls for a volcano eruption? Could it be the same forces that cause lava to be created in the first place?

Isn’t it that the earth itself is demanding to be reshaped? Isn’t it that pressures have brought us to a place which has no resolution without changing our entire landscape?

Einstein was the one to say`We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” and what could be more plutonic, more nuclear than him, than that?

A situation is forced to the breaking point: a death, a bomb, an explosion, a fight, an accident, whatever the ending is, that this beginning forces, you will find yourself in new territory, under new pressures even if you didn’t make the choice yourself!

Sudden and unexpected events are the story for the whole rest of the month. There is big news that we take with us, life altering events for many. Could someone important die? A public figure perhaps? In a word, yes. You might move, start a new job, or project, end something as a way of making a new start.

Is it dangerous? Well, it is. It is dangerous. Fear won’t help you here, or will it?

In a way, in a way it could be helpful, because in the sky, this time, it’s Chiron who steps up. Chiron who knows he will never fit in, Chiron who carries the weight and privilege of not being the same, of not following the rules.

It’s that energy you can lean on: Authenticity, accepting your fear as you find it, it’s the one where you say to your audience “I’m really nervous today” and then go on to give the best speech imaginable. Give your fear all the room it needs to breathe without allowing it to stop what you came to do.

For the December 2018 Solstice I wrote a Chiron in Aries Message for Sibyl Kempson’s 12 Shouts project at the Whitney Museum, I’d like to read some passages from it to you now:

– I want to say also, that there will be a lot of waste. It will take too much time. You won’t be able to get it right. That’s it. You are doing it, move ahead.

We are all trying so hard right now to not let go, of our lives, our impossible circumstances, the reality, the facade we have constructed, and at the same time we can see that we have to, we have to tear the past in half, even as part of what we are tearing is ourselves, and our desire to maintain, to have an understandable, a comprehensive structure under which, and even more importantly within which we can live.

That is gone now. You are holding it like a piece of paper and the wind will rip it from your hands and you will watch it taken from you, as the wind takes things, in it’s own time and without regard for meaning in the way you are able to understand it.

There is no constructed meaning. It’s humbling, and standing there is not enough. You will be forced to move your legs, your feet, even your arms and the rest of you. You will have to carry yourself to another place. And as you go, you will see the earth reshape itself around you. New colors, new objects. No security…..

We are waiting, and now, even if, even as, we are pushed out the door of the airplane, already teetering at an unthinkable, and yet absolutely logical, a measurable distance from where we are going, even if we are pushed, at some point, and that point is now, we will still have to jump. –

That jump for our Capricorn New Moon appears as an inevitability. If you don’t feel it January 13th, you certainly will in the days to follow. Uranus resumes direct motion January 14th and presses hard with Mars against Saturn and Jupiter. The Sun and the Moon join Pluto and participate.

Something will crack. It will bend, brake and snap.

It’s a high drama moment that kicks off nearly a month of struggle which we won’t emerge from in any genuine way, until our New Moon in Aquarius on February 11 &12 for our Chinese New Year, the year of the Ox. & Thank God for that!

Rebecca Solnit writes:

– Sometimes a gift is given and neither giver nor recipient knows what its true dimensions are, and what it appears to be at first is not what it will be in the end. Like beginnings, endings have endless recessions, layers atop the layers, consequences that ripple outward.-

We cannot arrive at our New Moon in Aquarius without this, our New Moon in Capricorn. This is that battle that we have been anticipating, shocking but absolutely integral. The trash won’t take itself out, until finally, maybe it does.

It could certainly be an accident, or even a lucky break, and if this happens, whatever happens, step into the new.

Chiron here aligns with Jupiter and Saturn in Aquarius, Venus and Mars suggest we behave sincerely, practically and not the least bit hemmed in by what anyone expects.

Conflict is the big news, despite interpersonal sweet spots and unexpected GOOD NEWS, which we will certainly have.

Rilke sez “What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us. Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are.”

Let’s allow this space for the contrasts we experience, let’s be open to our own imperfections and humanity, to the joy of being sincere, which is as right as anyone can be. Can you feel that?

There is a promise here, and certainly a prize:

The beautiful benevolence of imperfect desire, imperfect attempt, that is a love song.

Our promise is courage; bravery which can not be felt without fear. Who comes to help us now? The influence of our ancestors, which is a way to say our own biology, our chemical makeup, our internal dialogs, our bones and the muscles that carry us through the space we share with every imaginable creature, an infinity of vibrating molecules which individuate us and link us, inextricably, together.

We are a universe in motion. We shake, we spin, and we breathe. Let’s do some of that now on purpose. Let’s do it together. Let’s breathe and feel everything happening that is happening. Let’s breathe together and welcome each other into our hearts. I’m so glad you are alive and breathing here with us.

Love YOU!!!

XoX

p.s.

Happy Carnival!

p.p.s.

What is the difference between crazy wisdom and just being crazy?

In the case of ordinary craziness, we are constantly trying to win the game. We might even try to turn craziness into a credential of some kind so we can come out ahead. We might try to magnetize people with passion or destroy them with aggression or whatever. There’s a constant game going on in the mind. Mind’s game- constant strategies going on- might bring us a moment of relief occasionally, but that relief has to be maintained by further aggression.

In the case of primordial craziness, we do not allow ourselves to get seduced by passion or aroused by aggression at all. We relate to these experiences as they are, and if anything comes up in the midst of that complete ordinariness and begins to make itself into a “big deal,” then we cut it down- without any special reference to whether it is good or bad. Crazy wisdom is just the action of truth. It cuts everything down. It doesn’t even try to translate falseness into truthfulness, because even that in itself is corruption. It is ruthless, because if you want the complete truth, if you want to be completely wholly wholesome, than any suggestion that comes up of translating whatever arises into “your terms” is not worth “looking into.”

On the other hand, the usual crazy approach is completely up for that kind of thing – for making whatever comes up to fit into your thing. You make it suit what you want to be, suit what you want to see. But crazy wisdom becomes completely accurate out of the moment of things as they are.

– Chögyam Trungpa