Wednesday 11 August 2010

To Love, Nurture & Honour - Part 2

Ceres is the nurturer, her position in our birth charts helps us to understand more our motivations behind how well we care for ourselves and for others. Ceres as Mother represents housewives, teaching, midwifery, farming and care work – all core nourishing roles.

The unconditional nature of Ceres’ love is very important now, for each of us needs to love ourselves unconditionally. We need to honour ourselves (warts and all) and nourish ourselves in every way possible.

Interestingly, Ceres has been linked with psychological aspects of nourishment from relationship complexes, food complexes, and eating disorders – all of which stem from an imbalance in nurturance either given or received during those times which were particularly influential in our lives.

Despite not being on best terms with Pluto (understandably!), Ceres complements him in many ways. She helps us to accept loss, abandonment, cycles coming and going (through suffering, grief and loss we come to realise that a new cycle begins; and this helps us to develop compassion, acceptance and empathy). In addition, Ceres helps us to come to terms with death and dying – at some point each of us must descend within into that dark place where our fears reside. Ceres wants us to fully understand the process and to let go of fear. She wants us to see dying as the beginning, not the end.

As Goddess of the harvest, she teaches us key principles of sharing (the earth’s resources), living sustainably, love, compassion, ‘letting go’, the eradication of world hunger and our love for nature.

So, now is the time to think about nurturing not only ourselves, but to look outside of ourselves and to nurture all around us as well. This is not about depleting our own energy reserves, but it is about treating the earth (and all her other many inhabitants) in the ways in which we expect to be treated ourselves.

Finally, Ceres shows us that the expression of anger is extremely important – her anger drove the world barren, and unless we find channels of release for our own anger, we turn our inner landscapes barren. Letting go of this is a must if we are able to love and nourish ourselves and others.

It is important to continue nurturing and nourishing ourselves on every level of our Being. This is vital for our well-being, but how many of us actually look after ourselves that well? Some may treat the body as a temple eating well and exercising often, some may meditate and tend the gardens of their minds with love and care, and some may find ways to release stress, anger and other strong destructive emotions on a regular basis. But how many of us do all of these things?

Ceres continues to ask each of us to honour and nurture ourselves on every level and to take the necessary steps in our lives to create the Inner Utopia we each need in order to fulfil our potential and achieve our dreams. Yet she wants an Outer Utopia as well – a world balanced, in harmony, and it is up to each and every one of us to try to make a difference.

In a way, this is a time of re-birth. As we step back into the world over the coming weeks, we will begin to see more clearly our paths ahead.

This may feel like a huge undertaking, and in many ways it is. Yet it is simple – the more we can look after Number One, the more we can eat well, to get the work / life balance right and to re-focus on our priorities, the more we can address our outer landscape and collectively create Ceres’ Utopian dream...