By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Letting Go. Photo by Sharon Bellenger.

LET GO. Now that's a surefire scary bit of advice for Halloween, eh? Let go of what is no longer reasonable, workable, and worthy. Let go of people, places, things and systems that no longer bless your life.

Transmutational Pluto is taking its final journey toward the Galactic Core for a big millennium-shifting shindig in December, meeting up with expansive Jupiter in what can only be called a life-changing event. Samhain is urging us to celebrate both all that's passed and all that's within our current harvest, just as Halloween invites us to run the streets in darkness and pleasure, trusting the good humor and kindness of the tribe -- the Sun, Uranus and Mars form a grand trine in water signs that allows us to enter a portal of majikal proportions, as comfortable with death as life, with darkness as light, aware of the All There Is without qualification. Yet, being humans, we may miss it...because in the stark light of day, everything around us is shaking with an energy that we both recognize and fear -- instability.

But we have our marching orders, don't we? Embrace change or get creamed. Holding on to what was is like inviting in the Big Cosmic Boot to move your unwilling little self along with a swift kick to the backside.

If letting go means "living on the edge," then it would be useful to do a brief mental inventory of our lives and realize that we're already there; we've been there awhile now, and we're managing pretty well. I know not a single soul who is flush financially with clear horizons ahead, or so secure in their community and relationships that they dance a jig each morning when the sun hits their bedroom window. I know very few people who are confident in their tomorrow or satisfied with their today. I can't think of a single friend who trusts their government to act in their best interest, their employer to commend them for their good work or their daily activity to be less than complex or aggravating. Yet we're chugging right along, most of us, living on the edge, gaining skills at being insecure and living in the moment.

Oh yes, we're anxious -- we have every reason to be. But let me qualify all this anxiety we feel, and indeed we do feel it...recent reports proclaim one out of every four Americans over the age of 18 suffers from a "diagnosable mental disorder in a given year." Many of these sufferers swallow a psychotropic mood enhancer daily in an attempt to beat back depression and angst.

Our fears are driven by a deep anxiety about loss -- yet we live in a time of loss, a time of reconfiguring and change. We're being asked to review our goals, rethink our values and rediscover our humanity. The frustration, sorrow and perception of loss in our current energy signal has sensitized us, awoken us to present fears and dangers and rendered many of us apathetic to the point of merely walking through our lives, disinterested and overwhelmed. Yet even apathy is a doorway to change; as with anger, one cannot live there forever.

I will now mention an unspoken, disturbing and rather dark truth about life in 3D -- when the old and beloved family pet, for instance, finally breathes its last, there is, among the many emotions that fill us and make our eyes spill over in hot tears of loss and our noses turn into faucets that gush down our face a vast sense of relief. It can be called no other thing. Relief. And to name it is to own guilt...or so we think. Yet nothing lasts forever, nothing was meant to. The truth is that loss is, psychically, a point of release...sometimes pleasant as well as painful.

The California fires gave us many moments of clarity on this topic -- much as did Katrina and the Christmas tsunami. Those who escape disaster with only their lives have been given a choice in how to proceed with the rest of it. As you might imagine, the loss of so many homes in this area has hundreds of people looking at the cost, both actual and emotional, of reproducing their former circumstance and scratching their heads in dismay. The psychic weight of our belongings, our self-definitions, our life context, simply cannot vanish in an instant...or can it? And if it does, what next?

In what he described as "a real sense of futility," one local man who lost his home declared, "What you want to do is just climb on the back of a Harley and go ride and live out of a pup tent for the rest of your life."

This man had invested everything into a particular lifestyle and now he's been forced to surrender it; I doubt that he has a pup tent in his future, but perhaps, due to eyes brimming with tears and snot flowing from his nose, he is not aware that while a door has snapped shut, a huge creative window has opened before him. He will need to let go of what was before he can climb through it with a sense of joy and purpose.

We live in an extreme period of history and that will likely continue. Our political realities are simply a mirror for what is happening within our towns, neighborhoods, selves. The government systems that are shaking into bits, the flawed social systems that we find so discouraging are not the only systems failing -- our old paradigm thought system is breaking down as well. All we see around us speaks to that chaos; we designed it ourselves.

We must begin to understand that the loss we feel, the anxiety, is required to take us into the new energy; that the darkness and meanness that seem to bubble up everywhere we look have come to be discovered and released if we are to move ahead. We must choose to embrace the daily changes and challenges, to allow them to be "sufficient unto the day"...we need to surrender to the moment, whatever it brings, and offer it our best baby steps along the path. 

We cannot become this new thing, this newly enlightened human, unless we surrender the old to yesterday; tomorrow is being built on today, even as you read this. Whatever thought has formed in your mind at this moment, whatever emotion is dancing in your heart, is creating tomorrow right now -- we must be willing to lay our baggage down, and the Scorpio energies surrounding us are helping us to understand how profound, how necessary, that has become.

The "pain and loss" tapes, produced by a consensus of old paradigm humanity, still play unceasingly in our society and drive us; we continue to suppose that emergency will bring us down, that loss will cripple us, that life will kill us. Yet we can pick up a paper and read about how life goes on, without homes, without jobs, without "stuff." Life continues to inform, to bless, to offer options, even when all we thought we needed is gone. And even castaway on a desert island, we would not find ourselves alone, in these temporary bodies of ours. We will know what comes next, day by day, minute by minute, if we listen to the still small voice within us -- the one that speaks for kindness, patience, forgiveness, allowance. That one is ever with us.

The masters speak to living in the "now" as our only point of power. Yesterday's gone, however good or bad it might have been; tomorrow is ahead of us, none of us can know it. Now is the majikal point in which everything is happening, the moment in which we seed our dreams, celebrate our blessings, define our possibilities. If our grip on everything that we have, on our old tired self-definitions, on everything that has ever happened to us cannot be relaxed, our hand will never be open to receive the new thing, the inspired thing, the divine thing. And that thing is coming, isn't it? It's almost within reach.

The changes are happening in our "now"...they're happening within us. Tomorrow will look different -- more peaceful, more gentle, more prosperous -- only if we are able to surrender the old thought system to a higher iteration of understanding. And the challenge of our day isn't to keep the job, secure the homestead, satisfy our dependence on consumerism...our challenge is to grow into ourselves. Where we're going demands some skills we humans find difficult. Skills like staying awake, finding the opportunity in every circumstance, trusting ourselves.

Let me say that again.

TRUSTING ourselves. Trusting that the things that move out of our lives are in our best interest, that what appears as loss makes way for something else to enter in. Trusting that we are powerful spiritual beings dressed up for Halloween like mere mortals, and will know what we need to know at every moment. Trusting that what we release with a sense of confidence in our unknown and hopefully shining future will bring new and perfectly, uniquely designed gifts to our open hands...if we will just bring ourselves to let go.


CREDITS: Associate Editor: Priya Kale. Webmaster: Anatoly Ryzhenko. Proofreader and Fact Checker: Sara Churchville. Horoscope Editor: Jessica Keet. Associate Photo Editor: Sharon Bellenger. Business Manager: Chelsea Bottinelli. Published by Planet Waves, Inc., a Washington State corporation, all rights reserved.