Looking Death in the Eye by Jessica Murray

Looking Death in the Eye It’s the perfect time to look death in the eye. Right now, Pluto and Uranus are leaning in so close we can practically feel their breath.(1) Sparks from the Aries and Leo transits are practically singeing our eyebrows(2). If we’re feeling bold enough to look death in the eye, first of all we get ourselves centered. Then we identify our most deeply entrenched fears — the ones that make our innards contract just thinking about them (Pluto). We single out our most life-draining habits. Then we face them, one by one, in a flash of radical, liberating lightning honesty (Uranus). We mentally raise our hand, as at a 12-step meeting, and say that we’re having a hard time getting free of these energies. We ask Uranus and Pluto for help. These are just the right planets for the job, and it’s just the right moment to invoke them. The veils between their world and ours are very thin. The powers of demolition are restive. It’s a matter of directing them to what needs eliminating. The Universe will be taking attendance on the Equinox, March 20, a solar eclipse. Let’s send up a signal that we’re present and accounted for. On the Pluto station of April 16th we can request a signal back. Let us do this collectively, too. Right now, while the air churns with emergency, let us confront the fact that our Earth is in fatal peril. A ceremony of recognition is called for. Calling a spade a spade. What is required here is a solemn acknowledgement of the enormity of what’s happening. We’re not praying for salvation or pleading for a fix. We’re not rushing in prematurely with “But what can I do”-type questions. We are simply making a commitment to seeing clearly. A moment’s respite Call it a truth break. Like the trench soldiers during the Christmas Truce of 1914, who decided, then and there in the Flanders mud, to stop shelling each other for one brief, miraculous moment, let’s make time this month to turn off the devices, quiet the distractions, and set aside a couple of minutes to be with reality, the overweening reality of our lifetimes: that the world is in a state of catastrophe. We each have our own idea about what the most pressing issues are. The environment, the global economy, the seas dying from acidification, the fifty million refugees from the world’s battle zones; take your pick, each one of them deserves to be at the top of the list. But the meditation I’m proposing is not about listing global crises, nor is it any kind of mental exercise. It’s a psycho-spiritual exercise, and it has to be done before we search for solutions or choose behaviors, if such things are to have a ghost of a chance of working. To look death in the eye(3), in this context, means sitting for a bare moment in consideration of the state of the world,(4) without distancing ourselves through analysis, without recoiling in despair. No martyrs In pondering the world moment, feelings of anguish or fear must certainly come up. But to focus upon these feelings – to indulge them, to make the exercise about them — is to miss the point. The point is to make a declaration that we choose to respond, rather than react, to life — as it is, here and now. It is a solemn promise not to sleepwalk through the rest of our tenure on Earth. If we believe that everything is connected, it follows that the responsibility for the world situation is shared. So in our prayer we are not blaming others, nor dumping global horrors in the laps of the gods. Neither are we hoisting them, martyr-like, upon our own shoulders. To look death in the eye, in this spirit, is a small symbolic gesture of huge spiritual significance. We are taking responsibility for having incarnated when and where we did. We are telling our soul that we haven’t forgotten it. We are recommitting to its purpose. Pluto in Capricorn The astrology of the past three years has squeezed into unmistakable public visibility the eco-/genocidal course the world is on. One of the more obvious developments is the explosion of inequality in the distribution of Earth’s resources. While two billion people on our planet now live on less than $2 a day, by next year the richest 1 per cent will own fully half of the world’s wealth. Over the course of Pluto’s tenure in Capricorn, many of the old-fashioned principles by which modern civilization used to Greedy2define itself have eroded. At this point in the devolution process, for example, in the higher echelons of American society “honesty is now a professional and financial liability”(5); as on Wall Street, in 2008 and since. From a moral point of view these trends are appalling; from a practical point of view, they are untenable. Even pragmatic economic theorists are calling the situation a time bomb. Another contender for the Most Dystopian Trend award is the desecration of land, water and air in the scramble to extract the last of the fossil fuels. Fuel from dead ancient creatures, to prolong an age that is dying. A friend of mine writes from Abu Dhabi: I went to the oil industry exhibition this week. There were thousands of fat middle-aged men, looking unhappy. I sat drinking a cup of coffee provided by Oxy Petroleum, surrounded by expensive machinery for making holes in the Earth. The flow of people was like the flow of thousands of ants, players in a mad drama. Most are alienated cogs in the system, wanting to believe that the overpaid men on the boards of Total, BP, Exxon, Chevron and Shell know what they are doing. The rising temperatures, freak weather events and droughts are not real to these folks. What is real is their shiny machinery, the complex computer software, and the conviction that the oil will never run out. Here is where we exercise choice. We can live in denial, or we can choose to be a clear-eyed witness to what’s happening. This takes courage, of which Jupiter, Mars and Uranus are giving us an enormous surge right now. Courage engages the Law of Correspondences, through which we start attracting truth and truth-tellers. Let’s remember that to be informed is not the same thing as “being negative.” Let’s not insult awareness by calling it “pessimism.” All sentient beings know that the ghastly imbalances going on in the world right now are unsustainable. They contain the seeds of their own destruction. To look death in the eye is to concede the obvious. The old order is dying. We know this not just from world events but from our gut instinct. And we have heard it in the prophecies: the ancient lore about this era we live in, legends that tell of a momentous turning of the macro-wheel, a return to balance. The fact that balance will be restored is not in question; that is Natural Law. The question is whether humanity will shake off the old consciousness in time to avoid the extreme chaos of the transitional phase: the phase between now and when the new paradigm kicks in. There is no outside agency –“society,” “They” — that will determine this. Only we will. We, as individuals, will create, or fail to create, a life-affirming future for the planet. To affirm life we must look death in the eye. Get ready for the rush of power that arises when you do. Notes 1 Pluto is exactly squaring Uranus right now, exact to the minute of arc on the 16th & 17th. 2 Mars and Venus in Aries T-square Uranus & Pluto exactly March 4th -11th. 3 Ancient tribes had rituals of this nature. Discussed in my webinar on Pluto. 4 Consideration means to be in alignment with (con) the stars (sider), or living through the center of our chart. 5 “…you make more money by being crooked and destructive than you do by being productive and honest.”