The Astrology of Prostration: Developing a practice of positive disintegration

THE PISCES FEET are the only part of the human body that is constantly pressed against — merged — with something else. In this sense they symbolize our unbroken connection to the divine ground of Being. The symbolic headquarters of egoic identity (the Aries head), on the other hand, is located as far away from this seamless encounter with unbroken oneness as humanly possible. Thank God for Aries! Individuation is a vital evolutionary step towards the end-game of living as a healthy identity-wave moving lucidly across the divine ocean. That’s why the inversion of head to toe is so powerful and important.

So long as personality and will are pausing for permission to proceed from the signs and symbols of the unified field (ocean-sensing Pisces), our life flows in harmony with the Tao. This inner posture of prostration allows us to tap into a deeper sense of existential belonging where “over there” and “over here” arise together as one and we rest cozy at the center of the wheel of incarnation.


Why Prostrate?
All our lives, we’ve been falling down on our knees to a concept of who we are. The power of physical prostration is that it exposes this burdensome devotion to me-ness that assigns godlike importance to our feelings of enough and not-enoughness and is, therefore, humiliated and flooded with feelings of inauthenticity whenever we place our head at the feet of anyone or anything else. Prostration helps us pass swiftly through this fire of egoic humiliation into a state of positive disintegration — the great unburdening that transplants our orphaned ego into the soil of true nature: awareness itself.


The Motivation and the Fruit
There are two things we need to come into union with god, guru, tao or true nature: love and ego-loss. Love (or longing) is the motivation that initiates prostration; ego-loss is prostration’s fruit. First, we must generate a mood of sincere aspiration. Next, we surrender this self-conscious aspiration in heartfelt devotion at the feet of someone or something that embodies the virtues we aspire to. Again, Aries will or “driven-ness” is balanced with Pisces surrender or “being drawn.”


Who or what shall I prostrate to?
Buddhists bow down, not so much to a solitary guru, but to the lineage of teachers moving through them. They bow down to the greater, guiding intelligence moving through these inspiring incarnations.

Who, or what, do you authentically revere enough to bow down? What would you make your master and be completely obedient to? What do you honor so much that you would place your pride below it?

Suppose you are unmoved by any living or deceased spiritual being. No problem. In India, disciples are not so perfectionistic in their attitudes towards spiritual teachers. Masters can have “off” days or moments. Disciples merely wait until “the awake guy” returns. You can do the same with your inconsistently awake friends. Here are some examples of devotion-worthy “gurus” that may generate the heartfelt impulse to prostrate:

• A loved one whose consistent embrace of you though all your bouts of pride and moody self-absorption breaks your heart open.
• The unfathomably guided string of events that has matured you into this lucid, life-pivoting moment.
• Any being in whose presence your defenses spontaneously melt away.
• The unfathomable patience and forgiveness of mother earth.
• The shine of eternity in the eyes of an infant or the heartbreaking devotion of a pet.
• A culture (India) that offers free medical consultations to “saints.”

You get the idea. The important thing is not the devotional target but the depth of reverence that it stirs.

Sometimes, we may need to put our body into the posture of prostration before we know what we’re bowing down to or what our aspiration is. Perhaps our prayer is simply for the clear seeing that would allow a spirit of humility and devotion to arise in us. This is an entirely worthy prostration activity and infinitely preferable to rote prayer or manufactured devotion. Often, all we need is a small corner of someone or something that embodies a kind of clarity or tenderness that evokes admiration and reverence. Once we find that, the momentum of the posture, itself, is often enough to catapult us into the humility needed to enter a devotional mood of “replace me with you.” As Rumi says, the longing is the connection.


Prostration Jump Starts
Here’s a short list of questions that, I pray, may help you get in the mood to fold forward and empty yourself of yourself enough to hear The Eternal whispering you home to your soul.

1. What virtues do you deeply revere and find yourself magnetized to?
2. What wants to be released to make room for these virtues in yourself?
3. Who’s example tells you this is possible?
4. If there’s even a small chance that bowing down to this admirable quality in them might instill it into you, are you really okay not bowing?
5. Can you honestly say that you aspire to a quality born of ego-death if you’re unwilling to bow down to whatever or whoever you recognize as embodying it?
6. How might spiritual friends support your aspiration and inspire you to assume the mood of prostration in your everyday life?

Prostrating to an Awakened Archetype
But what about astrology? Can archetypal insight motivate full-bodied devotion? Oh yes! The great blessing of a felt sense of archetype is that it gives us the power to name and consciously work with very subtle ego energies (both in ourselves and others) and meet them with compassion and insight into the soul’s divine intention. Archetypes, after all, are mere head-stuff until we learn to feel them as divinely ordained catalysts for communion and, yes, prostration. What kind of Creator would fail to drape the world in symbols with the power to guide and break open our devotional heart?

Click here for an astrologically inspired invocation practice entitled, “Win Yourself Back.” Try reciting the awakened expression of each of the 12 archetypes out loud. Perhaps there is one affirmation in particular that makes you feel dirty — like an insincere fake. Could this be your soul beckoning you to prostrate to that facet of the divine mind?

Prostration-Instigating Quotes

You must go out of yourself so god can come into you.
~Meister Eckhart

When we relate to personality, we are bowing down to conceptual shape.
~Mooji

Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship
will eat you alive.

~David Foster Wallace

When the hunger to know the truth overtakes the character’s desire to survive, the light of reality lays witness to the whole dreamscape.
What is revealed is that the flaws of this character cannot be reconciled because in truth they are not flaws because there is no character.
There is a falling in love with what is called the human predicament and the flaws are then seen through the eyes of Love as flawless.
~Devaj

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