THE PURPOSE OF INCARNATION is to win ourselves back from the hypnosis of compulsive Aries “selfing” and allow personality to flower like a dream character from the Piscean ground of being. In AstroChiFlow terms, this is achieved by aiming the Crash Helmet’s identity-asserting will at becoming aware of the timeless presence that pedals our Pisces feet. (See “Cloud Pedaling.”) This circulation of awareness between the willful Aries head and the surrendered Pisces feet is vividly depicted in one of the oldest recorded symbols in the western world, the Ouroboros, the “tail-devouring snake,” pictured here in a 1478 drawing by Theodoros Pelacanos.
An emblem of wholeness or infinity, the Ouroboros is the western equivalent of the Eastern Yin/Yang symbol. It accurately depicts a state of consciousness in which the circuit between head-born Aries individuality and foot-born Pisces absorption in the Infinite is alive and flowing. This is a somatic way of describing the depolarized state that Buddhists call “nonduality.” Minus the endless jolting between the sense of separation and the experience of pure awareness, we are, in effect, outwardly somebody and inwardly nobody. Nature’s wheel of seasons has come full circle and consciousness straddles the cusp between first and last, Spring and Winter in a kind of sublimely integrated equinox state. We have assumed the inward (if not outward) shape of prostration. Pride no longer prevents us from bowing down because we intuitively know that this is the closest the body will ever come to assuming the shape of the tail-devouring snake.
AstroChiFow as Perceptual Yoga
The purpose of learning to hear the body/mind reciting symbolic scripture to us is twofold:
1) It prods us to inquire who is speaking. Implicitly, we can’t help but ask, “What is this transpersonal presence shining and miming so intelligently through each body/mind?”
2) It provides a totem pole of metaphoric hints (in the form of the body’s systems, structures and organs) as to how and where we, as consciousness itself, get identified with the transient phenomenon of the mind and world so that we can, over and over, return to our true position as the witness.
To harness AstroChiflow as a practice of perceptual yoga, I suggest breaking down the 12 somatic scriptures into four sequential groupings (see below). Try going out to a public place to practice decoding – and, thereby, resacrilizing – the two-legged Bibles milling all around you. Obviously, some somatic scriptures are not visible to the naked eye so you will need to use your imagination and focus on the general area of the body where they are located. The trick is to focus on how each successive body part moderates the excesses of the previous one. Is this not divine compassion in action? Notice how the more you practice, shared soul destiny starts to eclipse personality. This universally shared mortal itinerary is what body/minds were originally designed to point at!
1) Head/Neck/Arms. In order to ram a karma-burning locus of identity through the Spirit/Matter veil, the soul dons an Aries Crash Helmet. Next, we tone down the ego-asserting adrenalin and dip a straw into the body (the Taurus neck or Taproot) to sip grounded sensations from the world. Finally, we ventilate the accumulating density of the body by branching outward via the Gemini Chi Tendrils (arms, hands, lungs, tongue and nervous system) to form a dynamic network of learning and communication between people, places and ideas.
2) Breast/Heart/Colon. Imbalanced, perhaps, by too much heady Gemini information gathering, the soul turns to the Cancer Cradling Sacs (breasts, ribcage, stomach and womb) to provide us with emotional intelligence and a restful, self-embracing nest, then overflows our privately nourished soul-esteem out into the world in the form of creative expression and leadership as symbolized by the Leo Posture Pump (the heart). The Virgo In-test-ins, then swoop in to help us discriminate between vanity and divine confidence.
3) Kidneys/Genitals/Thighs. Lest our quest for purity become perfectionistic, the soul grows a pair of Libra Team Cleaners (the kidneys) that symbolize our need for ego-cleansing relational mirrors that provide an accurate reflection of our capacity for compassion and communion. The genitals deepen Libra’s understanding of intimacy by encouraging us to become Shadow Hounds that expose visceral Scorpionic truth. To navigate these intense, primal desires, the Sagittarian Meaning Marchers (the thighs) hike us into a wider, panoramic view that provides studious, guiding ethics.
4) Knees/Shins/Feet. Next, the Capricorn Climbing Levers (knees) arrive to translate what might have become armchair preachiness into grounded, reputable contributions to society. Lest this gift of matrix-navigating strategy and discipline becomes too self-serving and miserly, the Aquarius Kick Starters (the shins and ankles) inspire us to reinvest our success into the community that lifted us up. Finally, attunement to the Pisces Timeless Trance of Toes arrives to ease our activist toes down into the unimprovable ground of Being that guides and supports our every footfall.
At the end of each head-to-toe scanning of the body, ask:
When the seed of heady identity falls down through the feet into the ground of being, who sprouts? Does not the AstroChiFlow of the body present clear evidence that awareness longs to wake up to itself?
End your practice with a prayer:
Hold us in Your timeless glory and let the whole human story take a rest.
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