Lizard

Organize – Balance – Equality

How can I extend my equality to others?

The Rhythmic moon is the sixth of 13 in a 365-day solar cycle that begins July 26 with the rise of Sirius at dawn. In the first, Magnetic moon we discovered our purpose for the entirety of this 13 Moon year. In the second, Lunar moon we identified the challenge within our purpose, the obstacle we have to integrate or overcome to reach our divine intent. In the third, Electric moon, we felt the presence of the divine fill the distance and heal the discord between our purpose and challenge. In the fourth Self-Existing moon, we were shown specifically what form our service would take, the foundation for the temple this year represents. And in the fifth, Overtone moon we were given the empowerment from a divine source to move forward, upward, in our willingness to offer our gifts to all.

The Rhythmic moon is somewhat mundane compared to all this initial splendor. It imitates the heartbeat – that steady, sometimes fast-paced but otherwise even pulse that indicates we are in fact alive. We take the rhythm for granted unless it lost, are more likely to observe and marvel at it in others than ourselves. The Rhythmic moon is similar: it governs our life force by tempering it into a constant beat, pacing all the work we do in service to the world. Within the frame of a wavespell of days, moons or years, it is a bit less flamboyant than flashing our purpose or challenge, empowering us with radiance or pushing us to the top of our perfect waveform. Rhythm is invisible, and sometimes only frames other sounds rather than forcing itself into dominance. So this moon is subtle, even subliminal. It’s an important stage to pass through, the alignment of all we have collected in experience so far into a constant pulse that will move us further forward.

The moon always coincides with our culture’s Christmas obsession, how we have turned the mass of Christ consciousness into a never-ending shopping excursion into malls that Jesus might have eyed as warily as the temples where money-lenders hovered. WWJD? Overturn the bins of hair barrettes and the wall display of ipod accoutrements with an enraged sweep of his sinewy arms. Meanwhile, we have the darkest, inward days of the Northern Hemisphere and the inverse bad habit of being busy with plans, purchases. It’s interesting to see the onset of winter, a remembrance of Christ, and the so-called New Year all emerge in the Rhythmic moon – our First World culture finds its heartbeat in shopping, Christianity and another fresh start. But we can each in consciousness redefine the Rhythmic moon to pulse at a calmer vibration, removing the pacemaker that pushes the cadence to a frenzy.

What’s really on your to do list for this 13 Moon year? It’s easy enough to feel it surging through you after the previous moons aligning us to our service and empowering – emboldening – ourselves to move into the action of giving. We have a holiday of giving that seems to expend our life force entirely. So choose in the Rhythmic moon to go organic, pagan, extremist in your anti-materialism. Give presence in lieu of presents, and the essence of this 13 Moon year’s energy that is now coursing through you. You don’t need to acquire anything, just open the door into what you already have collected. And in keeping with the pulse of this moon, the rhythm, give a little at a time. It’s exactly imitative of what a heartbeat actually is: a valve opens and closes, sending a flow of oxygenated blood into the streams of your being. Open-closed, expansion-contraction, in-out, yin-yang, a swinging interplay of opposite qualities.

This brings us to the word equality. The Rhythmic moon is not a time of favoritism, of either black darkness or blinding light. Yes, Winter Solstice proves that we have short days and long nights, but if we remember the Southern Hemisphere we know its residents habitually hang Christmas stockings at midsummer, and usher in a ‘new year’ at peak sunshine. So the remembrance of this time is against self-absorption, differentiation, an insistence on hierarchy. We are all equalized by nature, are equal to nature, and the overlay of culture, the primacy of civilization – holidays, holy days and declarations of a new year that is arbitrary – are diminished against that truth. The Rhythmic moon succeeds for each of us if we find a truer rhythm to live by than the pop culture’s winter ceremonies, and return instead to sensing clearly the cycles of nature.

The key question of the Rhythmic time is ‘How can I extend my equality to others?’ It affirms that our season of giving – reaching out to others – is a beautiful ritual. And yet what we are asked to extend is not a thing, is nothing, but the humility of sensing that we are all the same. Against the sun, moon and stars, we humans look much the same one to another. Even more beautiful is the sense that we are equal also to these heavenly bodies. Through the mass of Christ where we honor a prophet with an incredible ability to offer himself humbly, through the extreme of solstice and the turning point into either growing darkness or light, through the strange phenomenon of a new year which is just a misnomer for the transition solstice brings – we must believe we are equal to the godheads and sacred seasons of this time. I extend my equality to Jesus, to you, and I extend my equality to the return of light, as well. In my outreach, I acknowledge your outreach, we meet in the middle; you are Jesus and light or darkness as I am. We are equal, part of a continuum of beings that in turn form a pulse for life on this planet and beyond.

This image starts to make the Rhythmic moon more magical, after all, and can heal the holiday blues, the family dysfunction, the faithlessness we can feel towards a Christian message. We give easily from what has poured into us from source, and in that dance of open-heartedness and self-loving closure, we see a rhythm in ourselves that is equal to nature’s. We are the short days, long nights, the firelight, the shock of cold mornings. The Rhythmic moon aligns our 13 Moon wavespell’s intention with all others’, an endless drum circle of singular beats first in cacophony then settling over 28 days into harmony.

The balance, equality and rhythm of this moon all direct us to move easily between poles, extremes, and difference. The constant intention is to stretch outwards with ease, interchanged with the opposite gesture of taking to heart what we find with our fingertips. In this way we organize, reform our organism, make ourselves organic by honoring nature’s mastery. It’s a tribute, this time, too, to the heart of all matter, the organ that directs our life’s perfect flow between giving and receiving.