8th June 2013: New Moon in Gemini

Listening to the Deeper Truth

Today’s New Moon marks a shift from identification with others through common interests, world views or values, to finding our place in a widely diverse world which contains every opposite and extreme you can possibly imagine! It’s not a shift we can make overnight and sometimes it’s far easier to do than others, but at the time of this New Moon we have an opportunity to focus our energy and attention upon the whole wide world in all its glorious diversity and paradox, truly knowing it as a reflection of our own inner complexity.

This is an impersonal but contact-oriented Moon. That in itself can sound paradoxical, but the contact this Moon desires is that of one open mind to another, not the contact of one headstrong ego to another with a subsequent battle to clarify who’s right and who’s wrong. This is contact which recognises we all have thoughts, feelings, beliefs and opinions which make perfect sense to us at the time we have them, no matter how they may appear to anyone else. Everyone has their story and their understanding of what life’s about. We can all justify our views on the things that matter to us, even when those views are in direct opposition to someone else who can just as readily justify their position.

So what does this Moon want of us? She wants us to stop, just for a moment, and remember that each of us lives within our own story, our own drama, out of which we fashion our lives and until we can bring a compassionate awareness to that fact we may miss the clues in someone else’s words or behaviour that say ‘Underneath all this anger I’m in pain or fear’; ‘Behind this arrogance I’m terrified’; ‘I don’t listen because I fear what you may have to say’. It can be a real challenge to listen in this way, to experience the deeper truth beneath someone’s words, especially when those very words arouse anger, objection or bitterness within us. We are all of us trapped within a labyrinth of thoughts, feelings and associations from the past, but the more we can step outside of them even just for a moment, to listen with pure awareness to the words of another, the more likely we are as a global community to eventually come together in a state of peace and understanding.

This New Moon seeks that very peace. She sees the barriers to it and offers a helping hand to those who want to step over or break them apart rather than stop at them and hurl stones across. She encourages us now, in the theatre of our everyday lives as much as on the world stage, to listen to the truth behind the words, both our own and other peoples’, remembering that suffering is born of suffering and peace is born of peace. And if each of us can, just for a moment, bring a compassionate awareness to an exchange which would previously have been one of conflict and discord, seeds of peace are planted which can, in due course, grow into a collective harvest of healing and unity.

Happy New Moon everyone!