Dear Friends, 

How do we come into calm wisdom and maturity in our relationships –
showing respect for other’s ways of being and doing?

What a great question!

It sounds so simple, doesn’t it – but looking at the political and social unrest across the globe, the wars and persistent acts of revenge and retribution, as well as disagreements in our personal lives, it seems that many of us have not yet developed the maturity and skill required for calm wisdom and respect in our relationships.

You know by now how I love to explore ways of knowing – especially when they involve metaphor and symbol.

How then could I resist exploring the Sabian Symbols

“The Sabian Symbols are a set of 360 phrases that correspond to the wheel of the zodiac. Each one of these symbols holds a story and unique energy field of their own, to further help to understand your path in life.”

Lynda Hill

According to one of my much-quoted teachers, Heather Ensworth,

How do we come into calm wisdom and maturity in our relationships – showing respect for other’s ways of being and doing?”

is the Sabian Symbol that corresponds with the degree where the explosive, out-there energy of Uranus met the active, expressive energy of Mars on 15th July. The effect is passing and the conjunction will no longer be activated beyond 23rd July.

From one perspective, the wars around the world, the polarised argument, exclusion, bigotry and dis-respect are a lower octave, or immature expression of the Mars-Uranus energy. And humanity has been playing it out for the last 5000 years.

Thankfully, we don’t have to remain stuck. We can each transcend the duality – our sense of being right naturally means that the other is wrong – whereas perhaps the other is simply different. We can transcend our trauma responses and reactivity. We can each make moment by moment choices about the way we wish to respond in our relationships.

As Buddhist teacher H.E. Khangser Rinpoche[i] says:

“Nothing lasts forever, so why waste your valuable fleeting life fighting with others and being upset.
You are worthy of a life of joy, but it is truly up to you to make it happen.”

You are worthy of a life of joy – yes!

But it is truly up to you to make it happen.

This is where the rubber hits the road!

We each have a personal responsibility to make it happen – so let’s circle around to the How question again.

Khangser Rinpoche continues

“Your life is like water, which has no shape of its own. If you pour water into a round container, it takes on a round shape. If you pour water into a square container, it takes on a square shape.
By the same token, your life takes the shape of your choices.”

Putting the same idea a different way, Heather Ensworth (and many others) considers that we are individually and collectively affected by cosmic energies – whether consciously or not and that these energies will manifest themselves according to our level of consciousness (our maturity) and the choices we make[ii].

Moment by moment, we each have the opportunity and responsibility to choose – will we be caught up in the tumult we’re seeing played out in the world, in fear, reactivity and anger.

Will we replay our past trauma, or will we take the path of healing to live in wisdom and peace.

I have a particular aversion to a certain ex-president, and I refuse to give any of my energy or attention to him. Apart from briefly scanning the headlines, I will not read or listen to news articles, I will not entertain predictions about future events. I refuse to contribute in any way to the hype, pandemonium and divisiveness that surrounds him.

In a way, this is easy for me to do. I don’t have a personal relationship with this man, and I have no direct capacity to influence him.

What then, if the difficulty is with one who is closer?

Perhaps this Centaur story will assist us.

Remembering that in myth, Centaurs represent transformation through the life-death-rebirth process, Nessus offers insights into what is necessarily an introspective journey.

Melanie Reinhart[iii] begins her telling of the myth of Nessus thus:

“Nessus was the centaur who was indirectly responsible for the death of Hercules.
The whole Hercules cycle, of rejection, struggle, labour, drama, violence, and suffering comes to an end with the episode involving Nessus."

From Reinhart’s perspective, Hercules represents the Heroic ego in both its positive and destructive elements.

The story begins where the tale of Pholus, shared a few weeks ago, ends. After the affray which resulted in Pholus’ death, some of the centaurs, including Nessus fled to the river Evenus. Here, Nessus became the self-appointed ferryman – carrying travellers across the treacherous waters when the river was in flood.

Hercules approached one such day. He asked Nessus to carry his wife, Deianeria across the waters, so that she would not get wet. Hercules threw his club & spear across the river and waded in ahead of Nessus. Nessus carried Deianeria away and violated her. Turning at the commotion and horrified by what he saw, Hercules shot Nessus through the heart, with one of his poisoned arrows.

As death approached, Nessus gave Deianeria some of his blood, saying that it was a love potion, that she should give to Hercules to keep him faithful to her.

In her naivete, Deianeria accepted the potion and sometime later, as Hercules prepared to go to a tournament, she spread the blood onto one of his tunics.

Having said farewell to Hercules, Deianeria accidentally spilled some of the potion on the ground. Warmed by the sun, the potion began to roil and foam. In a moment of horrifying realisation, Deianeria saw that unknowingly, she had spread Nessus’ poisoned blood onto her beloved’s clothing.

She sent a messenger to warn Hercules, but it was too late. Hercules had donned the tunic and it’s poisoned coating began to eat into his flesh.

With his skin on fire, Hercules raged over mountains, tearing up trees, wailing and lamenting with great agony, hopelessly trying to tear the tunic from his body as the poison corroded his flesh.

Eventually, Hercules surrendered to his fate. He accepted his reality, even though the situation was not to his liking. He asked that he be allowed to die in dignified solitude on a pyre of oak and olive branches.

His request was granted, and he was taken up to Olympus. Even Hera, Zeus’s wife, who had loathed Hercules so much that she had sent poisoned serpents to kill him, had compassion and adopted him.

So, with exquisite irony, having been killed by the same poison that he had used destructively against the Centaurs, Hercules transcended life on earth and found his place with his paternal ancestors.  

Peach coloured double rose flower with dark green rose leaves behind

Isn’t it the way that life sometimes gives us poignant lessons to assist our learning?

As I mentioned in my last email, I’m spending the summer volunteering on an organic rose farm. This week has entailed weeding between rose bushes and yesterday, it was my task (and joy!) to clear the weeds from an overgrown vegetable patch.

Encounters with rose thorns, stinging nettles and biting insects left my arms on fire.

As I tossed and turned through the night, it took all my self-control and deep breathing practices not to tear at my skin, to lament my pain or to flail about. I could empathise with Hercules as he thrashed, skin burning, feeling the betrayal and ironic reality of his situation.  

And I could relate the fiery sensation to the rage and upset my ego has felt at times of betrayal, deception and perceived attempts to harm me. 

“The story of Nessus would seem to provide a reflection of the kinds of emotions, urges and energies which are required to become aware of, and thus to transform, if we are to free our consciousness. This is a realm beyond the psychoanalytic perspective, but includes it. . .

Here we not only see the past of our psychological inheritance replaying itself and interpret the present according to these patterns, but we also see the dynamic energetic reality which is occurring now, in the present, between people, places and objects.

To see this means that the scales fall forever from the eyes of our innocence.

Indeed, the theme of ‘false innocence’ can be seen in Deianeira accepting the ‘love potion’ which was actually a poison. You do have to wonder how she could have been so deceived . . . “

It would have been easy for the themes of betrayal, violence and revenge to continue to play out in this myth. But eventually, Hercules took a more accepting and mature perspective.

He accepted the reality of his situation, surrendered to it, received the grace to restore right relationships and to transcend, to the upper Olympian realms.

“Acceptance of the truth is critical to the development of joy!
How can you feel happy if you’re stuck in a web of lies?”

H.E. Khangser Rinpoche

In working through the “Nessus process” consciously with clients, Melanie Reinhart noticed the recurring theme “the buck stops here”.

Like Hercules, as our immature egos begin to accept the reality of our situations, we can choose not to act out, not to perpetuate violence, destruction and revenge, but rather to internalise our process, to choose to accept the truth of the situation and to commit to ending the destructive cycle.

Artistic impression of a person breathing out a dove
Photo of one of Deborah Koff-Chapin’s Soul Cards

“Science teaches us that there is an electromagnetic field of atoms and molecules that surrounds us, and that we exist within it and it exists within us.”[iv]

Energetically speaking, it is becoming ever more accepted that “the energy that fuels the movements of the planets is the exact same energy that forms the consciousness of both the overall universe and [us]

The growing body of scientific evidence corroborates what many know intuitively, that setting an intention and prayer can change the way the energy flows.

How do we come into calm wisdom and maturity in our relationships –

showing respect for other’s ways of being and doing?

Perhaps internalising the “Nessus process”, determining that the buck stops here and choosing to transmute our pain into lovingkindness would take us some way on the journey towards maturity.

[i] A Monk’s Guide to Finding Joy. H.E. Khangser Rinpoche
[ii] Uranus-Mars conjunction July 15, 2024 and Full moon July21, 2024: Heather Ensworth 
[iii] Chiron, Pholus and Nessus: to the Edge and Beyond: Melanie Reinhart
[iv] Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters that Drive Our Life. Jill Bolte Taylor