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Taurus - Prosperity and Earth Mother Love

by Guru Rattana, Ph.D. - Issue #192, April 22, 2012

The topics discussed in this issue are all part of the paradigm shift, from a male-dominated patriarchy to an egalitarian society, where both men and women operate from wholeness, and the higher expressions of the two universal polarities are integrated into our psyche, our collective consciousness, and our social, economic, and political institutions.

Planetary Alignments
Evolutionary, Developmental Stages and Themes - Summary

This issue is the third in a series investigating the illusions that we must identify and overcome to tap the powers and gifts of the 12 Zodiac archetypes. As discussed in Issue 190, Neptune in Pisces for the next 14 years presents us with the themes of denial, illusions, truth and reality. In this issue we look at the seven developmental stages, and evolutionary themes, in relation to the Taurus archetype.

Taurus Relationships

The first earth sign invites us to develop harmonious relationships with:

Taurus Themes

Basic Taurean themes include:

Taurus Lessons

Taurus lessons include:

Sensory Attunement

In Taurus territory we learn to develop our sensory system - sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell, to:

Taurus Developmental Stages and Evolutionary Themes

[1] Innocence and Naïveté - Illusions

In our state of innocence we experience that our safety, security, protection and basic emotional and physical needs are met without question. Abundant resources are taken for granted. We have no concept of limits, deprivation, dysfunction, or disruption. We do not experience lack, and live with the assumption that there will always be enough. We either have no concept of ownership, feel like we own everything, or believe that everything is freely available for our use.

[2] Wake-Up and Pain - Circumstances

Our wake-up calls are generated by childish innocence, maintained beyond the time that we are supposed to enroll in a growing-up curriculum, which includes learning about responsibility and realistic discrimination. We attempt to perpetuate our innocence through various forms of justifications, entitlement, neediness, laziness, and irresponsibility. Financial losses, health problems, and sexual abuse play a prominent role in the breakdown of our Garden of Eden illusion, and expose us to our vulnerability in the physical world.

The painful Taurus awakenings, that happen in relation to lack of money and financial crises, subject us to fiscal uncertainty. Unwise decisions regarding spending, investing, and borrowing money serve to painfully confront us with the laws of physical reality. Not only is our material well-being threatened, our illusion of guaranteed abundance and permanence is shattered. Our assumption that everything is under control, and can be controlled, is also proven false. We are subjected to personal limitations, in the face of events and circumstances beyond our control.

Other areas of denial, or improper attention, relate to our physical health and neglect, and a careless attitude toward our body and our sexuality. Our first reactions to both financial problems and physical abuse include feeling victimized, and unjustly treated or cheated. We also awaken to the disquieting realities of corruption, financial inequality, and scams. We become aware of economic injustices and ecological imbalance and destruction.

We are better equipped to make our contribution to changing an unjust, out-of-balance system, when we have first examined our part in the equation. We do so by looking at our naïveté, gullibility, and a lottery mentality that directs us to invest in and count on speculative sources of income.

Taurus requires that we earn a living and not live off of welfare, handouts, get rich quick (GRQ) schemes, or other people's money. Earth School teaches us how to take care of ourseves, and to give value to our bodies, our sexuality and hold ourselves in high esteem.

[3] Accepting the Evolutionary Nature of the Human Journey - Effort and Lessons

Life confronts each of us with challenges that we must deal with, so accepting situations as they arise, and using them to grow, to learn, and to empower ourselves is a more workable approach to Earth School than interpreting our life situations as unfair, bad luck, or punishment. We might also consider that we are paying off karmic debts.

Taurus lessons can be brutal. Surviving in physical reality demands hard work, serious effort, personal responsibility, and accountability. Like it or not, Earth School obliges us to learn how to take proper care of, and protect, our bodies and to earn a living to support our physical needs.

We attract situations related to sexual, emotional and physical abuse to learn how to:

If we have been treated with disrespect, we have to admit that we have been indiscriminate in our choices. Admittedly, there are many factors including our sincere innocence, lack of training, and predators lurking to take advantage of our ignorance. However, for our role in the drama, our emotional neediness has allowed us to sell ourselves for nothing. What about the answer NO! If we agree to interactions that are not in our highest good, then we must take responsibility for the results.

Energetically defining boundaries takes serious work. We have to create a feeling of self containment and security in our body. When we are energetically contained, we don't feel needy, we can interact with more confidence, and we can share without fear of abuse. When we are able to discriminate, to give ourselves value, and to live by our values, we are no longer easy prey for sexual, emotional, and psychological abuse.

Our life lessons in the arena of finances and supporting ourselves confront us to:

Experiencing both bad and good fortune reminds us that all aspects of physical life undergo transformation. We are subject to the cycles of life, death and rebirth. Disruptions and endings are part of life. We must adjust to the reality that nothing ever stays the same.

[4] Ego Definition, Separation and Individualization - Empowering Self

Life circumstances, that result in various forms of disillusionment, uncover the superficiality of our values and lack of self-value. Cultivating self-esteem is the foundation of the Taurus individualization process. In Taurus territory, we separate ourselves from that which does not serve us, and empower ourselves through:

[5] Developing Awareness and Consciousness - Higher Perspective

The Earth signs awaken us to the higher meaning of material world. The spiritual goal of the Earth signs is to experience the oneness of matter and Spirit, and to integrate spiritual values and energy into our daily lives. We surrender attachment to physical reality, and we allow ourselves to enjoy the beauty and abundance of Mother Earth. We honor our human life, and consecrate our body as a vehicle to serve love.

We learn to live by the laws of nature and relax into the Flowing Force. Connected to Mother Earth, we understand the collective concept of ownership and stewardship. We are humbled in face of the fact that nothing is guaranteed. We rejoice in the miraculous nature of life. We appreciate the abundance of resources available to nurture and sustain all life, and we enjoy the rich beauty offered to us by our Earth Mother.

[6] New Territory and an Expanded Reality - Spiritual Connection

Our spiritual journey takes us inside our skin, and connects us with the Flowing Creative Force of the Divine Mother. We transcend upper chakra belief systems that tell us that physical reality, our bodies, our emotions, our sexuality, and our feelings are bad and unhealthy distractions, that prevent our enlighenment. We upgrade, instead of deny, our humanness and our physical experience. Money and matter are not evil, if we live from our heart and move beyond attachment, selfishness, greed and power, exclusive material values, and excessive profit for a few.

We experience Mother Earth as our sacred home. We do not reject matter as evil. We move beyond guilt and fear into the realm of Love, where we respect matter, our body, Mother Earth, and physical manifestation. We develop a relationship with our body as a sacred temple. Our refined subtle senses connect us in oneness with nature, our body, and the Mother.

Because we no longer strive to escape physical reality, we acquire the ability to integrate Spirit into matter. We cease to project neediness, because we feel complete within ourselves. We share love, because we enjoy the peace and love in our personal sacred space.

[7] Work is Worship and Life is Sacred - Mission and Destiny

In-the-body awareness connects us with our gifts, and makes it possible to know our mission and the service that we came here to offer. Our desire to share, and the fact that we value ourselves and our gifts, open us to both give and receive. Whatever our work, we are here to serve the cause of life and the path of love.

The Path of Love
As harsh as the human journey can be, progress is made through the evolutionary path of love. Self-effacing attitudes, self-inflicted pain, self-righteous austerity, prideful deprivation, and guilt driven humiliation only serve to glorify pain and suffering, and perpetuate masochist beliefs of being a disempowered victim of earthly circumstances and cosmic forces.

We make progress as we cultivate and express the various expressions of love - acceptance, allowing, letting go, neutrality, non-judgment and compassion. The path of love honors our humanness, respects our personal journey, and patiently nurtures us through our learning and awakening process. Well-earned maturation builds self-confidence, and the inner strength necessary to access, maintain and enjoy experiencing our soul in a human body visiting Planet Earth.

Ego in Service of Love
All the capacities that we develop to deal with physical existence serve to foster our relationship with cosmic and natural forces. We learn to use our need for attachment to attach our mind to our experience of the Mother. We direct our desire to merge with something greater than ourselves, to allowing our emotions to relax into the Cosmic Flow. We use our ability to create habits, to anchor our awareness to the Presence of Stillness and Aliveness.

We spiritualize human life and thus overcome the illusion of separation, which makes it possible to witness the active force of the Divine Mother in all physical manifestations. As barriers dissolve, connectivity, wholeness and universality emerge in our perceptual field, and significantly widen our frame of reference.

Our expanded identity/ego serves as the instrument that makes consciousness, evolution and realization of the truth possible. Our ego is humbled, but not annihilated. It is through the open receptivity of our conscious ego that we regain our innocence. It is through our innocence that we merge in oneness with the Divine. It is with the directed compassion from our heart that we dedicate our life to serving Love.

A More Balanced Life

Technological gadgets and electronic media are marvelous inventions that make our lives easier, help us communicate, provide us with any information we want, and connect us in an infinite number of ways. However, over use disconnects us from our bodies and our hearts, and alienates us from the natural world. Every spring (fall in Southern Hemisphere) Taurus reminds us that we live on Planet Earth in physical bodies, with physical needs and sensual, sexual desires.

At both the Taurus New Moon (April 21st) and the Scorpio Full Moon (May 5th) the Sun, Jupiter and Ceres (now considered a dwarf planet instead of an asteroid) are conjunct in Taurus. The Moon joins in at the New Moon, and asteroid Vesta joins in at the Full Moon. Both Ceres and Vesta (now in Taurus) symbolize Taurean themes, the rebirth of the feminine in both men and women, and the empowerment of women.

Sustainable Goals - Taurus New Moon April 21st and Earth Day April 22nd

Everything - our physical heath, our emotional and mental states, our environment, our economic and political systems - is out of whack, because we are lost in our minds and have disconnected from our bodies and from the primal, nurturing Mother.

Taurus reminds us of the value of a wholesome relationship with nature, and the deep pleasure of living in balance with all life. Everyone needs to experience the nurturing beauty of nature. Taurus invites us to become nature-centered, so that we can escape the torment and confusion of our mental mind trips, and liberate ourselves from the spell of technological gadgets.

Taurus also makes it clear that we must work to reverse the destabilizing and destructive impact of human intervention, by taking responsibility for how and why we use our personal and the Earth's natural resources. Attuning ourselves to the healing energies of Mother Earth, we can address our health, economic, energy, and environmental crises. We can create something new, and shift from short-term, greed-motivated goals to long-term and life-enhancing objectives.

Scorpio Full Moon May 5th

The Taurus/Scorpio polarity inspires us to give value to what we cherish the most, by taking responsibility to transform what is out of balance. We are reminded that we are part of the web of life.

The Scorpio Full Moon exposes the truth about our motivations and misuse of power and resources. We are confronted with probing questions that oblige us to redefine our beliefs about money, security, purpose of life, and our role in perpetuating unsustainable policies. To restore balance, we must:

  1. reconnect with the natural cycles,
  2. respect the laws of nature,
  3. honor the life-giving, nurturing home provided by Mother Earth, and
  4. embrace, within ourselves, the flowing feminine force as expressed through our emotions, feelings and body.
Venus Retrograde - May 15th through June 27th

Venus, the traditional ruler of both Taurus and Libra, will be retrograde in Gemini between May 15th and June 27th. During this time, we will feel the need to reassess our values and relationships, and to look at how our attitudes toward money, possessions, aesthetics, and love impact how we create our reality. We will get in touch with how our current values have been shaped - by parents, education, religion, culture, and mass media, and we will uncover the values we hold in our own heart.

During this time, we can uncover essential truths and desires, and identify what really matters to us. What have we overvalued? What have we undervalued? We can acknowledge the importance of pleasure, beauty, and creativity. We are invited to claim our gifts and talents as a form of currency, which we can develop and share, and from which we can earn our livelihood.

The topics of money, love, self-value, what we hold dear in life, and a return to our essential nature will be on our mind. The power of love, not the love of power, will direct our actions and choices to a new way of being.

Ceres Earth Mother

The asteroids, which were named after goddesses, offer us wisdom and experiences for integrating the Divine Feminine into our psyche.

Ceres represents the Great Mother, the goddess of the harvest. Earth goddess myths are symbolic of the cyclical transformation of life, death and rebirth. They acknowledge the material and emotional cycles associated with loss, grief, renewal, and celebration. They speak of our inner journey into darkness, where we experience our unhealed and unloved self, and where we connect with the Mother Love that heals our wounds so that we feel safe, secure and nurtured in our bodies and on the Planet Earth.

Ceres personifies our archetypal mother wounds. When the milk and lap of our mother are withdrawn, we feel abandoned and deprived of the primal juice of life. Ceres heals our physical mother wounds by reconnecting us with the always available nurturing love of the Earth Mother. Once the primal Mother enters our psyche as an actual Force, we are able to let go of the past, live in the present, and enjoy what was, is and will always be available to us.

The key to our healing is our connection with the primal Mother Force, which makes it possible to let go of our attachment to human mother substitutes - both male and female. We must also humble ourselves and accept the mysterious cyclical forces of nature that constitute our physical reality, including mortality and loss. We learn to live in gratitude for what we have in the moment, and release what the Great Mother takes away in order to make space for her new gifts.

Ceres represents the healing that we must undergo to connect with what we really care about, and what nurtures our body, emotions and soul. Under the Ceres' influence, we become aware of how our subconscious longing for our birth mother and her womb gets transferred to our need for nurturing partnerships. Immature Ceres expresses this unconscious desire as needy emotional attachment. Our maturation process includes traumatic separations that serve as rites of passage into an emotionally mature inner world. The loss we mourn is the unchallenged pleasure we experienced in our naïve innocence. The cycles of life guarantee a transformation, and a rebirth into more conscious states of self-awareness and self-love.

It is our personal realization, that Mother Love is available during all phases of our life-long transformational journey, that gives us the power and sustenance to accept what we are given, and to release what is taken. We wake-up to the fact that the Universal Earth Mother is always both in us, and around us. We experience Her as a force that nurtures us, awakens our instinctual sensitivity, empowers our creative energies, and gives life to all.

Vesta Inner Flame and Sacred Space

Vesta moving into Taurus, a few days before the Scorpio Full Moon, aligns archetypal Mother energies to connect us with the Divine Feminine Force within us. The Vesta goddess archetype represents:

  1. the Source from which all things are created, and to which they must return,
  2. the beginning and the ending of life,
  3. the preservation of the sacredness of life, and
  4. the state of connection with the Infinite Source.

Vesta is symbolized as an altar, its sacred flame, and the hearth of our home. In ancient times, women maintained the sacred fire in the temples and in their homes. The flame represents the fire that sustains human life.

Vesta represents our inner sacred space, which serves as a container for the Infinite. Vesta's journey awakens us to our sacred space and womb within, where we can go to feel the presence of the Mother, and to connect with her nurturing energy.

Vesta represents human awareness of the sacred in physical life. In matriarchal societies, priestesses engaged in sacred sexuality, but remained unmarried. Their sole commitment was to worship of the sacred in life.

The Inner Art of Love by Guru Rattana, Ph.D.

 
The Inner Art of Love by Guru Rattana, Ph.D., answers both basic and profound questions on the navigation of your spiritual journey.

HOW to use the sacred technology of Kundalini Yoga and Meditation to:

Mother Kundalini and Shakti

Vesta's sacred flame symbolizes the Mother Kundalini which, when awakened, leads to spiritual enlightenment. However, Vesta's journey does not stop at her crown chakra. Her journey pulls her deep within herself, where she nurtures herself with the sustenance of the Divine Mother, and brings this healing energy into her human life. Vesta represents the integration of both the ascent and the descent of Kundalini energy. (Discussed in detail in my book The Inner Art of Love.) It is the integration that releases us from neediness, and brings us into a state of satisfying wholeness.

The activation of our Kundalini, and the ability to sustain this awakened consciousness in our body, produces Shakti, the manifested power of the Mother Source in a human body. Shakti is the embodiment of universal creative energy. Because the Vesta goddess can hold the fire of Shakti in her physical and subtle bodies, she has the power to bless and heal others.

Bhakti and Shakti

Vesta teaches us that to acquire and maintain our healing powers, we must preserve our connection with the Divine Mother, and stay connected to our inner sanctuary. Vesta is associated with focus, dedication, commitment, and sacrifice to that which we value the most. Vesta represents Bhakti - devotion, self-purification, and deep longing for the sacred.

Engaging with focus, dedication and comment in spiritual practices, is required to activate our Kundalini Shakti energy. Bhakti creates Shakti. Without Bhakti there is no Shakti. The result of Bhakti is oneness with the Divine and the unleashing of our Shakti goddess essence. The marriage of Bhakti and Shakti produce deep inner fulfillment and the experience of Divine Love.

Purification for Activation

When our Vesta or inner flame and sanctuary is not developed, we are unable to maintain our connection with the Mother. We feel pulled to get our needs satisfied in the outer world. We also feel intruded upon because we are unable to maintain our energetic boundaries.

We must purify our inner space to activate and make room for Shakti. When our inner space is filled with fear, stress, anxiety, our energy is consumed by lower negative thought forms. Bhakti prepares our inner space to receive Shakti. Shakti is the energy of creation, the source of manifestation, and the flowing force that makes life bloom.

The peaceful, clear energy in temples is a result of Bhakti. The chanting of divine mantras and sacred songs clears the space of lower vibrations and thought forms, and raises the vibration out of fear into love. When love replaces fear, we experience freedom, peace, and purity. Longing replaces doubt. Through our own experience, we taste the reality of Love. Our longing to maintain this sublime experience motivates our devoted efforts, to do what it takes to keep our connection alive. Vesta teaches us to make our physical, and emotional, bodies our personal sacred temple so that we can live in the reality of Love.

Kundalini Yoga - Meditation Guidelines

I would like to share a few things about the effects of meditation. Sometimes there is a mechanistic undertone to requests asking for meditation to deal with specific issues. There is the belief/hope that doing a specific meditation for 40, 90 or even 1000 days will completely remedy our situation. The assumption that simply performing a meditation will cure our prosperity issues is painfully pervasive.

The multitude of meditations given by Yogi Bhajan do address specific issues, and cultivate certain faculties or healing, and all Kundalini Yoga meditations have an integrative effect on our whole being.

Practicing any meditation is going to create an effect because the mantra, breathing, mudra and eye focus retrain our brain and rewire our circuits. Specific mantras, breathing patterns, mudras, and eye or other focus create results. All meditations given by Yogi Bhajan are designed to shift brain patterns, clear our subconscious, cleanse our vibration, and bring more coherency and alignment to our body, aura and subtle bodies, so every effort and practice adds a piece that integrates into our whole being.

Meditate with Attention, Awareness, Oneness and Kindness

In addition, while we are meditating we need to be mindful of several factors that are too often overlooked in the mechanistic approach - (1) attention and awareness, (2) oneness, and (3) love and kindness.

  1. Attention
    The more we pay attention to what we are doing and the effects of the energy transmission, activation and release in our physical and subtle bodies, the more results we generate. Expanded awareness is one of our goals. Techniques clear the space and elevate our vibration, making it easier to train ourselves to pay attention. Our job is to consciously cultivate awareness by paying attention.
  2. Oneness
    We have to become one with what we want to experience. To become one with something we have to accept it, and to feel it. If we don't feel it, we don't get it. We have to feel the energy that is unleashed when we practice a meditation, chant mantras, and do physical kriyas. Our prosperity requires us to become one with the manifesting Shakti energy in our body.
  3. Kindness
    Kindness generates the power of love. With what attitude are you doing your practice?

Meditate to Connect with the Divine Earth Mother

To take advantage of the earth energies offered while the Sun, Ceres and Vesta are in Taurus, we can cultivate a loving relationship with our body and Mother Earth. In doing so, we can become conscious of, and engage in, releasing our illusions about prosperity, most basically our spiritual fantasies that the Universe will support us without effort on our part.

Our life issues, related to empowering ourselves to become co-creators in the manifestation process, are discussed above in relation to the Taurus archetype. Pick one or two themes that are prevalent in your life, and work with them while you dedicate your Sadhana to lovingly connect with the Divine Earth Mother.

Transitions to a Heart Centered World by Guru Rattana, Ph.D.

 
Transitions to a Heart-Centered World by Guru Rattana, Ph.D., is a rich and unique compilation of the core teachings and Kundalini Yoga kriyas and meditations of Yogi Bhajan.

The new Second Edition, revised and updated,is ready to welcome a whole new generation of students to this life-changing technology. It offers powerful and effective techniques to both teacher and student, to empower your lower chakras and open your heart to unconditional love.

Contains literally dozens of meditations to access heart and soul consciousness.

Meditations for Sensory Sensitivity

There is a great series of seven meditations that cultivate sensory sensitivity, open the heart, and connect with Earth energies on pages 148-151 in Transitions to a Heart-Centered World 2nd Edition. Number four on page 149 harmonizes the practitioner with the magnetic field of the Earth. The arms are stretched out to the sides, palms facing down. As you hold this position, allow your breath to synchronize with the breath of the Earth.

Taurus Classes - Guru Rattana Online

Check out Guru Rattana Online lessons for Taurus under BODY/EARTH ELEMENT, for some very interesting classes on 'Prosperity, Creation and Manifestation', and 'Enjoying Your Body, Valuing Your Earth Experiences', and more!

If you haven't already subscribed, you will need to do so to watch these classes. For a low monthly rate you can enjoy unlimited access to all my classes.

References and Footnotes

"Taurus New Moon, Scorpio Full Moon", Austin, Stephanie, The Mountain Astrologer, Issue #162, April/May 2012, p. 98-9.

"Neptune, the 12th House and Pisces", Fernandez, Maurice, Trafford Publishing, 2004.

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