Forecast for Thursday 24 November 2011

Thursday 24 November 2011

~Thanksgiving~

One wonders often what people mean by "self-reliance" since we rely so much on everyone else, whether we are in business or living on social security or whatever our status. As a matter of fact, the more you think about it, "self-reliance" means just about nothing. Nothing at all.

You rely on whatever it is that gets you through each day and difficult situations. If it is your childhood upbringing, did you bring up yourself? No, your parents and society did. Is it your skills? Did you teach them all to yourself, or did you have help? I could not have learned astrology, and automobile mechanics could not have learned how to fix cars, without teaching from (in my case) dozens of astrologers through their writings and sometimes their conversations with me. Dozens of experienced mechanics. And if you drive a car, while you are driving you are totally dependent on those hundreds, thousands, or millions of mechanics and automobile engineers, for without them your car would not exist and could not be repaired.

Self-reliance? Perhaps one of the most meaningless phrases in English.

Seignior Borelli gives as symbol for the sun's position today, "The Goddess of Mercy Enthroned." This is extraordinarily significant in that today is Sri Aurobindo's Day of Siddhi (November 24, 1926), celebrated all over the world by those who know this Avatar and his work. Sri Aurobindo taught that, as he once put it humorously, "God is a woman," although of course God is also male to the highest degree of exalted, not foolish, maleness. That the Goddess of Mercy (called The Mother by Sri Aurobindo's disciples) should be enthroned on the day Americans celebrate as Thanksgiving---giving thanks to the God of mercy---is wonderful and not coincidental.

Whether you know it or not, you are dependent on the God or Goddess of Mercy.

We tend to become more aware of this when aware of death as having happened to someone, or seemingly likely to happen. Who would not turn to something greater than himself at such a time? Terror at times of crisis is a key to transformation. Why do people watch movies which horrify or terrify them? Or Greek or Shakespearean tragedies? In order to develop their ability to meet crises and transcend them.

Whom or what do you trust? is a significant question. We need to go deep in finding the answer. There could be a hierarchy of the trustworthy, with, for me, the Supreme Lord at the very top, and His Avatars, messengers, and guides in descending order. Then at lower levels there are the things, methods, procedures you trust as getting you through each day or earning you an income. The trust they have earned is always provisional and yet they must be trusted tentatively at least. And then the people who do things on which you are dependent, such as your banker or credit union, your car mechanic.

If we are reliant on a self, it is the Self of all of these and so a Super Self.

On the other hand, there is the rebellious instinct, the need to be oneself, as a child (of which age? I haven't studied child psychology lately) will insist that he is the omnipotent emperor for a period which exasperates his parents. This of course is not ultimate self-reliance because it is actually, unknown or self-hidden to itself, dependent on the parents whom it imagines it rules.
Then there has to be, following this, a period of self-restraint, when one realizes that holding oneself to the standards of the people around one is an inescapable necessity for survival and self-approval. Restraining oneself is not exactly ruling others, but an approach to it in a subtle way. Until, perhaps, the very idea of ruling or being ruled falls away, as in Karl Marx's yet-unrealized vision of "the withering away of the State."

At that point there is utter patience with everything and everyone because one sees how they all fall into a universal pattern of which one is not the victim but the happy active or passive participant.

To wish you a happy Thanksgiving means to hope that you will feel true and deep thanks to the Lord of All, for life and breath itself if nothing more, for if you do you will be happy.

{Thursday} ~Thanksgiving~

Cosmic Piper