7th - 29th May 2014: Mercury at home in Gemini

An Alliance of Mind and Heart

Mercury enters its own sign of Gemini today, and is conjunct asteroid Hygeia as it does so. Here we see an alliance between the mind realm of information and communication, and the heart realm of healing. This astrological partnership reminds us that we need a balance between mind and heart for true healing to occur. We cannot achieve wholeness without both these aspects of our being in harmony. If we seek too much to understand and find the logic in all things we neglect that part of ourselves which knows, beyond thought and ideas, that all things arise and cease for a reason. Likewise if we neglect the mind and reject its contribution to our lives we risk missing out on the beauty of creative thought, of knowledge shared and applied, of bodies of wisdom and skill passed down from generation to generation.

These days we run the risk of demonising the mind as a counter response to its deification which has characterised the modern age. Neither position is true, of course. The mind just is. It’s what we do with it that matters. It has its place and role and Mercury’s journey through Gemini in the coming three weeks seeks to reveal that role to us. When the mind is our tool which we can pick up and put down as necessary, when we can engage with ideas and logic as readily as with intuition and paradox, we are in a state of grace which enables all manner of healing and balancing forces to flood our being and bring into wholeness all that we are. Today Mercury and Hygeia remind us that the mind is a healing force as much as the heart and right now we have the opportunity to deepen our relationship with and appreciation of this facet of our being.

Which isn’t to say we all need to become completely head-centric and neglect everything below our chins! Mercury is a messenger and seeks to connect our mind and heart through an open channel of communication and exchange, just as it seeks to open the same channel between ourselves and other people. It fosters connection and creates alliances where previously there were none, so if we have been neglecting our heart in favour of our head, or vice versa, we have the chance now to connect the two and get some dialogue going!

Hygeia speaks to us of healing and wholeness. It reminds us that healing is not something that happens once, making everything new, but instead is an on-going process of adjustment and recalibration, of detoxifying and nourishing, of exploration and uncovering. Healing happens in every moment as our bodies, minds and spirits work together to keep us open and resonant with the life force which fuels our every day. It reminds us that healing is a natural part of life. It’s not something we can do to another or even to ourselves. It is merely the state of grace to which every cell of being yearns to return and our role is simply to step out of the way and allow that grace to arise.

What form that stepping out of the way must take will vary from person to person. For some it requires an emotional adjustment which removes the obstacles of fear, repression and denial to allow the life force to flow into previously neglected areas of their inner life. For others it may be adjustment at the physical level which allows natural forces of healing to do their thing. For many it’s a bit of both and more. We must each identify where and how we prevent the healing energy of the universe from flowing into and through us and then decide what we need to do about it. Which is where Mercury comes in, for in identifying how to shift our energy from blocked to flowing, moment by moment, we are establishing communication throughout our energy field, throughout our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual bodies, and we are recognising that all aspects of our being, including the mind, have their part to play in this process.

We have learned a good deal about the power of the mind in recent years, but much of this knowledge has been turned into sound-bites which belie the complexities of the human condition. Yes, our thoughts may well dictate our reality, but our reality is also something other than our thoughts, ourselves and our perspective. We are living in a world in which the connections between each and every living thing are now super-charged. In every moment we are conducting energy which connects us with all of life. We are more and more resonating as a whole rather than a conglomerate of independent parts. As such, ‘reality’ becomes a vibrating force-field of energy, impacted by every thought, every feeling, every action of everyone. We all contribute to and draw from this energy field with every breath and therefore each carry some responsibility for the state of the collective vibration. The thoughts we have about life matter, of course. Attitude can make or break a life. But equally if we focus only upon our thoughts without taking into account the energy source that is our emotions, our unconscious, the collective field of being, our karmic path or genetic inheritance, we are failing to embrace the complexity of ingredients which create the present moment and the array of choices we have in terms of how to make it a wholesome rather than wounding one.

The current alliance between Mercury and Hygeia encourages us to think about our experience, to make connections, seek answers and act upon information that resonates, just as it also encourages us to open our hearts to possibilities that cannot be put into words, and concepts which bypass the mind and speak straight to the heart. Convenient answers which overlook complexity won’t get us far at this point, but solutions which encapsulate the paradox of being an individual having a collective experience will, as long as we bring the mind and the heart together as one and recognise that they both conduct the same energy albeit through different channels and to their own unique ends.

It is time to embrace the mind, not as our master but as a cherished friend, an ally of the heart, not an opposite to it. Once we embrace them both and allow their respective perspectives to blend and merge we will have a truly holistic life experience and one which cannot help but be imbued with healing and wholeness, with each and every thought, heartbeat and breath.

Sarah Varcas