Cover Artist: Thalia Laughlin
Title: Growing in the Cycle
Medium: Acryclic
Contact: Thalia.laughlin@gmail.com
FEATURE ARTICLE
Purpose – Our Search for Meaning
• When people meet in a social setting, getting to know one another often involves sharing information around the question, ‘What do you do?’
• At some time in many people’s lives the questions, ‘Who am I?’ and, ‘What am I here for?’ arise.
• Following his years as a prisoner of war during WWII, psychiatrist Viktor Frankl published his observations of human behaviour and motivation in a prison camp, in his book Man’s Search for Meaning. He noted that a significant difference between prisoners who survived incarceration and those who didn’t was that those who survived had a purpose for living. Frankl’s own purpose was to be able to publish his findings.
Do you feel as if your life has a purpose? If so, how did you discover it?
Perhaps, as some people believe, we each have a special life purpose and our task is to discover what this is and fulfil it. Other people elect a purpose that accords with their needs or beliefs at a particular time, and this might change over time. So let’s examine some different ways that people seek to give their life meaning.
To find a direction in life, some people simply go along with what presents itself: one child might follow expectations and join a family business on leaving school; a girl who marries and has children young might become a dedicated wife and mother; someone who achieves early sporting success might make a career of their sport; an intellectually gifted child might decide to attend university and study for a profession.
Others make a more informed choice through going inwards to look for guidance, or examining options around particular personal values: to be of service to others; to protect the environment; to support a high standard of living. Or they experience a strong ‘calling’ in a particular direction, like Joan of Arc through her visions, or Princess Diana who said: “No one sat me down and said, ‘This is what is expected of you.’ But I’m lucky in that I’ve found my role. I love being with people.”
However we discover or choose our purpose, a risk can be that we begin to measure our own value by how well we perform – our self esteem becomes strongly tied to our success, in whatever way we define this. We can become so identified with our purpose that we experience a personal crisis if we can’t continue with it, as will often be the case: marriages end; children grow up and leave home; jobs and careers are lost for any number of reasons; sporting heroes age or are injured and can no longer perform at their peak. Suddenly we can feel purposeless: the pride we felt and the admiration we received for our achievements have disappeared; life has lost its meaning for us and depression can follow.
Is there a way to be deeply involved in what we do and yet not ‘attached’ to it? Is there a way to act with purpose, but if things change to be able to let go of what we do and find a meaningful substitute?
‘It’s not what you do; it’s the way that you do it’
One way to be thoroughly committed to what we do, yet be without attachment, is to separate what we do from our approach to it. This might sound confusing, but here is a perspective from Eleanor Roosevelt: The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.
And from the Dalai Lama: The purpose of our lives is to be happy.
So you could choose to do whatever you feel drawn to – maybe provide service to others, retire to the bush and be self-sufficient, travel the world, undertake ground-breaking research, create an empire, make a fortune – without making these things your primary purpose, if underlying what you do is a deeper motivation: the experience itself, the joy of it, love, excitement, accruing knowledge, being of service… You could also change what you actually do and still retain your purpose.
What you do is not who you are
An even more effective way of being committed without attachment is to mentally separate what you do from who you are. If you can make this separation you could be hugely successful, a dismal failure or anything in between, and it wouldn’t matter at all, because you will know without a doubt that no matter what changes in your life, you are still you.
Our ultimate purpose can be related not specifically to what we do or why we do it, but entirely to who we are. Once we discover our true self – generally through regular and consistent meditation and other spiritual practices over time – what we do becomes secondary to our way of being, our expression of who we are.
As life coach Colleen-Joy Page has said: “We seek purpose when we are not in touch with who we really are. When an apple tree discovers what it is, the question ‘what must I do?’ disappears. When you discover who you are (at the deepest place of your being) you will find your purpose.”
Annabel Muis
REGULAR FEATURE
May Astrology
There are two things that we’ll look at this month – both Sun-related and both very Gemini. Appropriate, as Gemini is related to dualities and pairs. We actually cross from May to June, as does Gemini, so it all fits nicely.
Firstly, there is a Solar Eclipse on 21st May at 0degrees Gemini. So the Sun and the Moon are in exact alignment as they move into Gemini. They are also in exact line with the Earth. Thus a Solar Eclipse. Now eclipses, which occur roughly every 6 months, set the tone for the next 6-month period, specifically the changes that will occur.
Gemini is infinitely changeable, as in dance, music and variety. There is a lightness and the butterfly effect. You know the one: the flutter of a butterfly’s wing in South America causes a hurricane in, say, Japan.
With this Solar Eclipse right on the essence of Gemini (0degrees) you would expect that the next 6 months will, at the very least, be versatile, full of small changes and, the other Gemini favourite, communication. Lots of new information flying around the airwaves: ideas; exchanges and a general light-heartedness.
How it impacts on you individually depends on where Gemini begins in your birth chart and what planets are involved. Anyone with a birthday on the 21st of May (and there seem to be lots of you) will feel very alive, full of ideas and the desire to keep it light and moving. For the rest of us it could be in work, family, creativity – whatever. Life can be a dance with you as the performer and director. Nice.
Venus Transit
The next event, which actually occurs on the 6th of June is Venus crossing the face of the Sun. For us in this part of the world it begins around 8am and ends at 2.50pm. So it will be quite visible here. Not that you’d like to look at it with the naked eye. Venus appears as a small black dot slowly crossing the Sun. You can view it through eclipse glasses or a grade 14 welder’s glass.
A little bit of history: this is part of a 243-year cycle, with this being the second transit in the current cycle. Past Venus/Sun transits have seen the earth being circumnavigated, Australia being charted, the world’s first postal system set in place; and the invention of the telephone. All very much related to communication and expansion.
This time the transit occurs at 16degrees Gemini: right in the middle of Gemini and in the Gemini Solar Eclipse cycle; multi-faceted, self-replicating, interacting. Venus has moved out of the evening sky and is preparing for rebirth as the morning star. The Goddess of Love emerging as warrior woman. Love rules! OK.
I think it promises a real outflow of creative ideas and inspiration to do what you love (and of course, love what you do) Even more information pathways opening and, for those working on this level, clear and present access to telepathic abilities. Synchronicities will be astounding, and turning ideas into things will flow quicker than ever before.
It’s about the dance, and again, depending on where 16degrees Gemini is located in your own birth chart, it will offer you amazing opportunities: fly; dance; and change.
You might not be surprised to know that 16degrees Gemini is exactly my Ascendant, the degree rising at birth, so I should have a good take on this one. It’s archetypal. If you want to know how it resonates to your own birth chart give me a call.
Enjoy the dance.
Rob Hart. Rob Hart can be found at the Heritage Markets, Kuranda.