By Elizabeth Smith, Astrocartographer
I got a text from a friend that read “Can you take a break from your clients and I’ll take a break from my crazy schedule so we can visit? Or if it’s too exhausting to talk, maybe we can just go to a movie or something?”
My work with thousands of sensitive, intelligent, tuned in people reveals that this is the reality for way too many these days.
How can a citizen of this intensely demanding time on our planet, with all of the associated pressures and corruptions, counter this crazy global momentum?
TWO OPPOSING VIEWS
Contemporary cultural messages, both subtle and direct, indicate that if you want to live well, to survive life’s challenges and have your needs met, you need to be revving your engines. And when that ceaseless on button starts to hurt, emotionally, physically, mentally, the remedy of choice, at least by mainstream standards, seems to say ‘just stay occupied’.
Slowing down can seem literally frightening. Like if you do, you might miss the proverbial plane of your life as it takes off without you.
In the spirit of Aquarian rebellion, when it feels like it’s all too much, there are many teachings from wisdom keepers of the past that offer a more balanced perspective. My personal favorite is the wisdom of Qigong, which translates as ‘energy cultivation’ and espouses energy preservation as a top life priority.
According to Qigong tradition, we stay strong, healthy, resilient and happy, while also increasing our potential longevity, by managing our life force with conscious care and intention.
CONSEQUENCES
As so many have experienced, our bodies and spirits don’t respond well to the ceaseless, driven feeling of constant mental and physical doing. We are electrical beings, after all, and if we don’t carefully and lovingly manage the life force (electricity) supply we have at any given moment, it can have negative effects. For some the red flag waves quickly as intuition or a feeling in the body. For others the results manifest as bigger life crises that take a while to incubate before bursting on the scene of your life as an illness or weakness or setback of some kind.
Regardless of your constitutional style, the energetic bank still works like any bank. If we withdraw more than we deposit, we eventually go broke. When we’re using more juice than we’re replacing in any given time period, it is unsustainable.
THE PUSHY PLANETS
When Mars is strong in the astrology chart or astrocartography map, the impulsive nature of the red planet spurs you on to action with rushes of adrenaline and testosterone regardless of the consequences.
Pluto influences can also fill us with brutal desires to achieve goals, to create structures or power dynamics, seen and unseen, and retain them despite the costs to our own or others well being.
Saturn runs our ambition and tendency to feel responsible. The Saturnian urge to feel in control can drive you to continuously push yourself, to keep working, to stay on task, to hold it all together like a parent in any arena of your life.
But just who are you showing up for?
All of these planetary impulses manifest on the human plane by drawing physical energy from our bodily organs. That’s why an understanding of the critical need for personal energy management really matters.
OUR LIFE FORCE IS EXPENDABLE
Time tested spiritual traditions like Qigong and many others that understood life at the level of subtle energy, teach that it’s necessary to regard your life force as a treasure you want to care for as you would a vulnerable new being. They teach that when we take time to cultivate well being, that higher energetic frequencies are increasingly present in our energetic field and help us navigate life with less effort and strain.
As we all know, that isn’t a commonly held value in today’s consumer culture so it’s up to all of us as individuals, families, communities to remember that quality and quantity of life are maintained through the balancing act of personal energy management.
SOLUTIONS
That means resting when you need rest, playing when you need play, making time for friendship, learning new things, creating, being around beauty, going outdoors to reset, detaching from the newsfeed or phone or computer long enough to breathe deeply and become aware of your life force, your Qi, even if it’s only briefly.
Touching base with Spirit within and without is the key to quality and quantity of life.
No one else can make these kind of moment to moment decisions for us. We each have to drive our own train and make choices that lead to sustainability. And when we do, quality and quantity of life may bloom in ways we never experience when life is nonstop ‘crazy’ as it is for so many today.