This week marks the ending of a seasonal cycle and the
beginning of another as mutable fire sign Sagittarius completes his work of
dissolving autumn into winter. The Sun enters Capricorn on Saturday December 21st
- the Winter Solstice for those in the northern hemisphere, and the beginning
of this year’s Capricorn Season. Remember the 'lessons' of Capricorn apply to us all, not just those with personal planets in this mysterious sign.
In contrast to the high philosophical ideals of Sagittarius,
Capricorn is possibly the most down to earth of all twelve signs yet
esoterically Capricorn is said to be the sign of the initiate and is associated
with discipleship. It is said that the spiritual ‘goal’ is identified in
Sagittarius and then in Capricorn we choose to walk the path. The highest soul
purpose of Capricorn is ‘to create heaven on Earth’ and it is no accident that
we celebrate Christmas and the birth of the Christ during Capricorn season.
If the notion of ‘creating heaven on Earth’ seems like a pie-in-the
sky idea, disconnected from the ‘real’ world, let’s remember that Capricorn is
the most practical of signs. Capricorn is all
about methodology and practical, tangible, demonstrable, results! The ‘heaven’
of which we speak in relation to Capricorn is not an idealized fantasy heaven,
but the real, grounded ‘heaven’ or ‘nirvana’ that comes from many years of
discipline, practice or ‘discipleship’ in a particular school of mind training such as
that practiced by Zen masters, Shaolin monks …and Samurai Warriors!
There is a story of a Samuri who asked his Zen master to illustrate the difference
between heaven and hell. The Zen master replied:
“You are too stupid to understand. I couldn’t possibly
explain it to an imbecele such as you.”
The Samuri flew into a rage and drew his sword ready to cut
off his Masters head. The Zen master calmly said:
“That …is hell.”
The Samuri fell to his knees and thanked the Master for the
insightful lesson.
The Zen master then said:
“and that… is heaven”
We can see in this story that when
we allow our emotions to be disturbed by events outside of us we are indeed in
our own sort of ‘hell’. When we are able to be at peace within ourselves, no matter
what is happening around us, we are in ‘heaven’. Yet we don’t need to spend years
of rigorous training in a Zen monastery to do this, we can all learn these
skills with a little knowledge and the ‘discipline’ of mindfulness.
The words ‘discipline’ and ‘disciple’ both have their origin
in the Latin verb discere which simply means to learn! So if Sagittarius has
identified the spiritual goal, Capricorn is simply learning how to get there!
The whole idea of ‘discipleship’ implies that
there is a practical methodology to achieve a tangible result. Through our experience in Capricorn we learn to build a very real "Stairway To Heaven". So what would this ‘heaven’ look like? Well we might simply call it inner
peace: the ability to be at peace no matter what is happening around us.
Over the next couple of weeks, in true Capricorn style, we’ll
look at some practical methods that we can all
learn to help us have a peaceful Christmas and New Year!
See you next time, and in the meantime...
happy exploring!
Best Wishes,
Ruth
