Today marks the 23-year anniversary of my life changing traumatic brain injury on May 19, 1998. Each year I feel gratitude for the life force energy this experience opened. I would not be doing this kind of work or living such a magical life without that very forceful course correction.
For months before that car accident, I kept hearing, “Quit your job, renounce your graduate school scholarship and fellowship, do spiritual work and become a landscaper and a poet.” This seemed way too weird, yet insistent. On the morning of the “accident,” I said, “Fine, if it’s so important, just make it happen!”
Careful what you pray for … but it did, in fact, happen, just hours later. I could no longer read, ended up needing to defer then withdraw from graduate school, and I never worked my sales job again. It took four years to recover enough to work even part time again, and when I did, that work was new work — intuitive work, not sales or becoming an English professor. At various times I spend more or less time on landscaping, doing spiritual work and/or writing poetry. This morning, I spent time in the garden and this afternoon I’m doing intuitive sessions (spiritual work). I haven’t written poetry in a long while but here are photos from today’s garden:
We’re about to enter the upper 80’s here, so I’ve harvested a LOT of lettuce and spinach over the past few days in anticipation of them bolting from the heat. Here’s today’s harvest:
My TBI anniversary always falls three days before my May 22 birthday, so it brings introspection from year to year, decade to decade. In late April, the Secretary of State notified me that I need to get a new I.D. photo, because my old I.D. expires on my birthday. David and I got his license and my I.D. at the same time, and he does not need a new photo. His gets auto-renewed, but for some reason, life ordered me to redo mine.
The Michigan Secretary of State’s office has very limited hours and appointments. When I first tried to schedule, I couldn’t get in until mid-July. Then, a synchronous opening occurred the afternoon of May 21. I find it extremely symbolic that I’m getting a new I.D./identity the day before my birthday, and that my birthday occurs three days after my death and rebirth TBI anniversary.
This year, my birthday also occurs the day before Saturn stations retrograde on May 23. (Depending on your time zone, Saturn could station retrograde on my actual birthday.) The Sabian Symbol for this turning is:
PHASE 314 (AQUARIUS 14°): A TRAIN ENTERING A TUNNEL.
KEYNOTE: The ability to short-cut the process of natural evolution by the exercise of will, mental skill and physical self-discipline.
In this symbol we see a condensation of what is implied in the three preceding ones. Man must be inspired by a vision of what is possible for him to achieve; he has to organize a schedule of necessary activities if the work is to be done in terms of successive moves, each requiring a specialized type of skill and strength (i.e. a hierarchy of functions); he has to find a propitious time for beginning the work. The end result is an acceleration of the evolutionary process, whether at the psychobiological level (that of yoga and other similar disciplines) or at the social level, i.e. the level at which, in its external aspect, civilization proceeds.
This fourth stage symbol presents a picture of what can be achieved by a combination of social and cultural, and even personal, techniques. It implies the possibility of shortening the length of time needed for progress by cutting through obstacles and delays. The Keyword is PENETRATION. (More Sabian Symbols here.)
The Lord of Karma proceeds through this tunnel until October 10, 2021, when Saturn stations direct at Sabian Symbol 7 Aquarius:
PHASE 307 (AQUARIUS 7°): A CHILD IS SEEN BEING BORN OUT OF AN EGG.
KEYNOTE: The emergence of new mutations according to the great rhythms of the cosmos.
The ancient symbolism of the Cosmic Egg (Hiranyagharba in Sanskrit) out of which a new universe is born can be interpreted at several levels. Here we see the appearance of a new type of human being who is not born from “Ancestors” and who therefore is free from the inertia of mankind’s past. He is a new product of evolution, a mutant. He constitutes a fresh projection of the creative Spirit that emanates from the cosmic or planetary Whole, and not from any local culture and racial tradition.
This second stage symbol is in contrast with the preceding one. It can be said to announce the EMERGENCE OF GLOBAL MAN for the New Age. The power of the whole is focused within him in perfect freedom from ancient standards of value based on local conditions. (More Sabian Symbols here.)
Even before I connected this Saturn transit on a personal level, I noticed an implied birth canal. A Train Entering a Tunnel, PENETRATION, until A Child Is Seen Being Born Out of an Egg, the EMERGENCE OF GLOBAL MAN for the New Age.
Powerful imagery! Adding this to my own personal transits and date synchronicities, I feel contractions moving and pressing towards something new and expansive. Something cosmic. Time will tell what this period initiates. Tuning into Nature’s rhythm keeps us grounded. As the collective enters a kind of cosmic birth canal, let’s remember to breathe and trust the process.
May we co-create something beautiful and each emerge as our most radiant selves.
