On waking last Tuesday I felt different. Acutely different. A new connection was running, pulsing, purring it’s way around my upper torso and particularly through my cervical and thoracic spine. Sinking in, down. I revelled in it for a few moments before rising. And as I touched in I became highly aware of a shadow in, what I thought, was my heart. Hmm? But no, I realised, this shadow was not in my heart. It was rather a shadow surrounding my heart. As if a grey smoky cloud swirling around it.

 

Holy guacamole! Hello former cage. Hello my protector, inner-critic. Friend?

 

Tangibly, wholly tangibly, I felt immersed in my shadow’s fierce desire to look after me and most significantly protect me from hurt.

 

And then I felt my heart space. Open. Vast. Accepting.

 

And I felt the two spaces, heart and shadow, both passionately wanting what’s best for me, but both caught in a battle, heading in opposing directions. The former seeking growth and abundance, the latter wildly shielding me from anything that might wound. Namely, the more deeply I explored, my reactions and thoughts. And jeez, this little old shadow of mine, is strong!

 

I saw how she’s used, sometimes blindly, every sizeable tool in her little toolbox acquired over the years to keep me safe. Tightly so. I saw how she’s worked hard, so very hard, to keep me there. And I realised how much I love her for her might. How I value her for her care and dedication to this cause and how am grateful for the many countless mountains she has climbed over the decades. For me.

 

And then, whilst I hung out with this clear, intense and greatly revealing sensing, I became aware of a harmony between these two spheres of self. Less now the fight, more the love and kinship. And it’s stayed. And it’s still wholly tangible. Juicy. Beating. Fresh.

 

And then the following day I read this:

 

“A seed of new perception was created yesterday when tiny Mercury, the Cosmic Messenger, moved so daringly across the face of the Sun, that enormous star at the center of our solar system, and your life — and it’s now embedding itself in your awareness. Are you sensing it? Perhaps not yet with your mind, but maybe with the soles of your feet each one contain 200,000 nerve endings? In the intuition of all those emotional neuro-receptors in your gut?

For the next 12 days, Mercury — who’s a part of you, just as much as he’s a planet in the sky — will be rethinking everything based on this new seed, whose Chandra symbol is “a fork in the road with a blank signpost.” It will be 12 days before this new perception is ready to return t the surface of your life with its new outlook on . . . everything.

This 12-day re-assessment begins today in a degree whose Sabian symbol tells us about the potential for our perception to confirm, and to be agents of, almost unimaginable change:

“A new continent rising out of the ocean.””

 

Hello shadow. My friend, buoyant companion, cheer-leader from the dark.

 

Image: Dora Brandenburg-Polster