Ancient societies knew that humans are intimately connected with our environment. At the root of all life is our connection to Mother Earth. And yet we live in a society that rejects that wisdom and misuses that gift .
So let's begin this new creation by taking time every day to find a bit of Earth to be with, communicate with and care for. Whether you live in the city, the country or the desert, you walk on this beautiful Earth, feel the warmth of the Sun's fires, are blown away by the winds and refreshed by the rains. Re-Connect! Learn to understand the voices of the Earth. Perhaps you can help or heal something. Perhaps you will be healed.
All native people created societies that lived in harmony with the Earth. Our modern society has fallen out of balance with nature and created great dis-harmony with the Earth. Our ice caps are melting and flooding the oceans with cold sweet waters that can disrupt weather patterns around the world. We are poisoning the Earth--her soil, air and waters--for profit and power, laziness and complacency, stupidity and arrogance. Is it any wonder that we can be hypnotized into believing that a corporation, a fictitious legal entity, can be equated with a living, breathing person?
Taurus' lesson is to teach us how to be good stewards of the Earth and her bounty. The astrological month of Taurus occurs just as the Earth in the northern hemisphere starts to blossom after winter's sleep. Taurus shows us the beauty and fertility that is Earth's gift to us if we live within the laws of nature. Taurus shows us the bounty of the Garden to entice us to believe we too are part of the beauty of creation if we take up our role as steward and caretaker of the material world.
What is being birth within the matrix of the comic cross is the evolutionary need for humanity to once again reclaim our place in Earth's ecology and discover our purpose, to live in harmony with each other and with all of nature and to learn from its wisdom. The Native Americans lived in harmony with the Earth and treasured the wisdom of the Earth. Luther Standing Bear, a Lakota medicine man, wrote:
The Lakota was a true Naturist - a Lover of Nature. He loved the earth and all things of the earth, the attachment growing with age. The old people came literally to love the soil and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. It was good for the skin to touch the earth and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth. Their tipis were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The birds that flew in the air came to rest upon the earth and it was the final abiding place of all things that lived and grew. The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing and healing.
That is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life-giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly; he can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him. . . .
Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky and water was a real and active principle. For the animal and bird world there existed a brotherly feeling that kept the Lakota safe among them and so close did some of the Lakotas come to their feathered and furred friends that in true brotherhood they spoke a common tongue.
The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too. So he kept his youth close to its softening influence.1
Taurus also gives us the gift of self-worth and the responsibility to have strong values. What do you value? And what values do you hold sacred? If we are to build (a Taurus activity) something new, we have to build it on values that are strong and secure. One of the troubles with our world is that we aren't living up to our values and ideals. People talk a good talk, but don't walk the walk. And so we have a nation, and a world, of hypocrites who want to look bright and shiny on the outside for all the world to see, but who are really living out very negative desires for power, greed, and domination. Until we change our priorities away from economic gain and back to community welfare and global inter-connection, we will fail to change anything. Our values form the basis of an ethical life and the ethical society we all imagine we live in.
If we want to change ourselves, we have to know what our values are and then strive to live them. Love, honesty, courage, courtesy, respect, hope, creativity, knowledge, wisdom, truth, honor, responsibility. These are just a few of the virtues that we need to live out our values, especially if we believe in equality and freedom.
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