Year of the Water Tiger: Call of the Warrior

On February 1st, 2022, the Lunar New Year will invoke a new animal and element, bringing us the Yang Water Tiger. Water naturally moves to the lowest position, flowing down into the deepest darkness of the abyss. Only water can flow with ease into the void, the unknown and the uncharted. The emotion associated with water is fear and the transformative principle is trust. Working with the water element means developing a friendship with fear, so that you can trust your life to flow into the unknown territories of your destiny.

The Yijing (I Ching) uses the metaphor of a river to articulate the many types of change one experiences in their lifetime. In this Yang Water year, we are asked to cross a big river. If we are brave enough to herald this call, crossing this river will change us forever, landing us on foreign shores, in the borderlands of existence, where even our understanding of home is washed away so we can never again return to the comfort of what was. 

The very first river is the birth canal. We are all born crying, reaching out in hunger and desire. Birthing is painful and dangerous. It is the result of unbelievable exertion and labor, leaving us completely raw and in awe. The Tiger represents the life chapter of birth: the aggression required to give birth and to be delivered. Action, force, tenacity - this yang energy is what is commonly associated with the masculine principle. From this delineation, if you take anyone who has gone through the pains of childbirth as an example, you’ll know that masculinity is by no means reserved for the male. 

According to Chinese Astrology, the Tiger is an animal of the east, of spring, and the rising sun. Water is the element of the north, of winter, and flowing downwards. We are being asked this year to make use of active, rising energy by drawing it downwards, making it deep. Emergence and manifestation will not come easy, requiring detours into the outskirts of fear, courage and trust. This year, we are being called to walk the path of the Warrior. The Water Tiger asks of all of us, regardless of gender identity - What is masculinity as a practice? 

The Daoist view of the universe is a process cosmology, meaning that the universe is in a never ending, self-sustaining and co-creating entrainment of opposites. Seeing reality from a temporal view, there are no objects, only events. And in the fullness of time, any quality gives way to its opposite. The universe is an endless dance between rising and falling, forming and dissolving, emerging and collapsing. This circular path is not in the shape of a circle so much as a spiral: it is always returning yet always new.

From the Daoist perspective, the most fertile human is the divine hermaphrodite, an androgyne who has access to the full range of gender traits. Yin and yang, masculine and feminine belong to all of us, and this comprehensiveness needs to be practiced to live the full human experience, and the most fertile life. 

The masculine that denies the feminine has a diminished capacity to experience emotion, controls through rigidity and fixed ideas, pursues ambition and competition at the cost of others, and lacks receptivity to form genuine relationships. The feminine that denies the masculine controls through manipulation and passivity, uses emotions to illicit and exploit, struggles with discernment and detachment, and allows themselves to appear incompetent and victimized to gain power.

Much has been spoken regarding toxic masculinity, but very little has been envisioned regarding masculinity itself. If the future is female, where does that leave the masculine among us and within us? We are already living in a widowed culture that is suffering from father and grandfather hunger. We can do better than to imagine a widowed future that furthers our deprivation. If according to the Daoist view, opposites are not binaries but define and create each other in an interdependent relationship, then the very livelihood of the feminine is predicated on the support of a healthy and robust masculine. The commitment and dedication to this can be called the Warrior’s path, and is available to us all. 

We can apply this to ecology, where nature achieves balance through a diversity of relationships, such as that of predator and prey. Human beings are predators and our survival and participation in the ecosystem is based on this fact. Predation itself is not problematic, but the denial that we are predators is. The blind outsourcing of our violence results in detachment from the web of relationships that hunter and hunted are inevitably responsible to. When we separate ourselves from what we eat and how we consume, we deny the relationships that provide for and make our living possible. 

By refusing to acknowledge the dying that is needed for our survival, we are detached from the natural limits of consumption. The dying that supports our living is hidden behind locked doors of factory farming, processing plants, and extractive industries of energy and mineral resources. Our death phobia drives our predation into toxic cannibalism, an unchecked and uninhibited entitlement to life. Nature’s apex predator, the Tiger, does not over-consume or dominate life. The Tiger can help reconnect us to our larger role within the ecosystem, and teach us much needed lessons on how to be a good predator. 

For six months during the start of the pandemic, I lived with my partner and our two cats (who we lovingly called our little tigers) on raw land in the Sierra Mountains. We arrived in triple degree weather in the summer and left in the snow and frost of winter. Living with our miniature predators and observing them in the wild taught me many lessons about the art of predation. 

Through endless games of ambush and chase, they showed me that aggression and assertiveness are effective only through proper timing. This timing cannot be summoned by will alone, but through patient focus and persistence until the outer circumstances support you. Through their play, I learned about spontaneity and improvisation, that hunting is a game involving both endlessly inventive strategies and instantaneous adaptation to the moment. 

They also taught me that hunters are followers. To be a good hunter means you open your senses to nature’s signs, you learn to read her subtle hints and gestures. Being a good hunter requires becoming available to the muse: you let yourself be led.  

On a cloudless November night, the air crisp with the clarity that comes with cold and stars, we heard the howling of a family of coyotes hunting all night. The next day we never saw our cats again. We lost them to nature’s cruel and beautiful devouring. 

In this heartbreaking way, predation taught me about communal existence - not just community made of easy alliances - but what it means to live and die within the web of all our relations. It taught me that the world does not exist to fulfill your needs. The mass spiritual debt of western culture is a result of living in a dead world, a world seen as a corpse waiting to be consumed that has no needs of its own, and as a result no need of you. When we live only to fulfill our own needs, our life has no intrinsic value. But a world that is alive and has its own needs, needs you to fulfill them. Participating in a world that needs us to give - in both our living and our dying - is what imbues our lives with value and purpose. 

The Warrior cultivates the courage necessary to face death and its consequences, understanding that death is what provides for our aliveness. The Warrior must grapple with the expansive sense of integrity that comes with living in an alive world. The Warrior knows that living in integrity is not about being whole or activating one’s potential. Integrity is a process of becoming whole through one’s relationships. The self in a world that is alive, co-creating, in constant process, is always communal. Everything shares in creativity, so everything has a piece of the story. 

Being effective as a Warrior means you recognize the true value of life, of all living things, so you don’t misuse them. To be truly proficient as a Warrior means you produce no waste, leaving no loose ends. Nature needs no outside source to dispose of leftovers. All scraps go into transformation, becoming new material. What the coyotes don’t devour the condors will, and eventually the worms and microorganisms, food needed for the grasses and the trees. It is this devouring that entwines our life and death with our togetherness, teaching us that our existence both demands and is defined by our participation in intricate relations. The Warrior understands that our relationships make our lives significant. 

Like most of the world, I experienced many types of dying in the last several years. Time has increasingly unraveled from its linearity, as the departed continue to give, bringing lessons from their dying. One thing I’ve learned is that grieving cannot be extricated from praising: they are two sides of the same coin. The Warrior lesson that perhaps requires the most courage is walking the path of cheerfulness. 

When I speak of cheerfulness, I am not referring to optimism or hope. Hope is the yearning for what is not yet, a bright expectation with hidden shackles. Beneath the assumptions that come with hope is a dissatisfaction with now, a refusal to embrace reality. It rejects the ordinary for the extraordinary, the natural for the supernatural. Total fearlessness is required to face what is, to not escape into the hope of what might be. Moreover, it requires the cultivation of a Warrior to become aware of the beauty and magic of the ordinary. The Warrior does not need the supernatural because nature is full of miracles. 

Cheerfulness is embracing fully one’s life right now. It requires a habit of awareness that appreciates the mundane. The Warrior cultivates these habits with the discipline required to be enchanted by routine. The Warrior knows that the profound is discovered through the ordinary. It requires a cultivated disposition to become aware of everyday magic. In an alive world full of the creative process of change and exchange, each form giving way to another is a ceaseless adventure. 

In order to be sustained this year, you will need the training of a Warrior. You will need the Warrior’s heart to dance the dance of opposites. The seemingly disparate forces disguised as conflict and undoing this year are in fact the tensions of creativity. The only way to know that your rising is not being thwarted by falling is to be in relationship. The Water Tiger will ask (if not demand) of you to reflect on your relations and how you are needed by the world. Perhaps you will find your answer near a rushing river or under a starry sky. Meditate on the Tiger’s mantra this year: “Give up hope. All that you need is here.”

Mantras for each animal sign to align with the Warrior’s Path: 

Winter Animals

Rat: “Trust is more important than truth.”

Pig: “Not knowing is most intimate.”

Ox: “In the fullness of time, everything yields to its opposite.”

Spring Animals

Tiger: “Give up hope. All that you need is here.”

Rabbit: “Making a decision requires parting with potential.”

Dragon: “Be ordinary and insignificant. Drop identity and be reborn.”

Summer Animals

Horse: “An empty heart is fully available.”

Snake: “I hide my light and nurture it in darkness.”

Sheep: “Happiness is being in love with reality.”

Autumn Animals

Monkey: “The obstacle is the way.”

Rooster: “Life and death form a single condition. What is good in my life is good in my death also.”

Dog: “Limitations make life meaningful.”

Year of the Yin Metal Ox: Thriving in the Unknown

This new year forecast is based on the Chinese lunisolar calendar. Last year was the year of the Rat and on February 12th, 2021, we will enter the year of the Yin Metal Ox. In Chinese astrology, the Rat and Ox make a perfect yin-yang pair. What the Rat starts, the Ox finishes. Like a bull in the ring, this year will command us to summon our grit and stamina - to dig our heels deeper into the historic challenges exposed by 2020. 

Last year was also ruled by Yang Metal, represented by the sword of justice penetrating our reality and the closing of metal gates enforcing limitations. This year we are engaging in Yin Metal’s theme of refinement. Yin Metal is symbolized by refined metal like jewelry and wire, which are pliable and flexible. It will require us to contend with truth’s more mutable and subtle nature. In our current reality wars, the battle for truth has never been so elusive. What we are asked to refine and let go of this year is our desire to know, and our conviction that we are right.

We are living in a “post-truth” era of media consumption that has left us exhausted and frustrated. It has become increasingly difficult to talk to people you disagree with, as well as to identify sources of trustworthy information. We are living in an infodemic - there is so much information that it is futile to keep up, and near impossible to know what information to believe.

The way to deal with this climate is not to expect easy answers, but to develop a working relationship to the unknown. Life is filled with the unresolved and incomplete. The Yin Metal Ox year will be full of events that will leave you feeling more unsatisfied, not less. Be wary of the ways your desire for closure is being taken advantage of. This is the type of false security that conspiracy theories, propaganda, cults and fringe religions offer by exploiting your inability to cope with the unresolved. 

What does the incomplete leave us with? The creative mystery of potential. In Chinese astrology, the Ox rules the life stage of pregnancy, representing nurturing and hidden work. The embryo is incomplete - it has much to develop and grow before it is ready to manifest. This year is about nourishing the smallest possible thing, the seed of creation that is barely visible, but is the precise emergent point that heralds change. 

Rather than feeding your need to know what will happen next, meditate on the idea that not knowing is a form of protection. This time is like a shell or womb, a protective covering that will be broken through only when the time is right. To emerge too early before the fetus is ready would be catastrophic. Those living in the protection of the womb are not hiding in ignorance, but becoming attuned to an inner awakening, a blossoming of unknowable potential. 

We are engaging in a new model for change. The patriarchy-colonialism paradigm of change has been implemented through sudden insurrection and revolution, often turbulent and violent. What would be truly revolutionary is to invite transformation through the power of yin - a slow, stabilizing, inclusive and integrated process that is focused on development, not on a hasty outcome. This type of change is akin to pregnancy, which makes space for hidden and mysterious processes. This is change based on earth wisdom and a geologic perspective (the Ox is an earth sign). Like a mountain, what has developed over time cannot easily be taken down. 

I am not promoting incrementalism. It is more important than ever to hold ourselves to the highest ideals, to dream bigger and more courageously. If anything, 2020 showed us the capacity for our world to transform beyond what we thought possible. But in order for change to be meaningful and have lasting impact, we must respect the time it takes to put roots down and become established.

We can’t hurry a bud to bloom any more than demand a fetus to be born. We must learn to love the delicate and sometimes tumultuous process as much as the beauty of the fully emerged flower or adult. This is the Daoist concept of wuyu or “objectless desire.” It is not to rid ourselves of desire, but to love things as they are - in process and incomplete. It is a desire predicated on our capacity to allow things to change, and at any moment to let go.

One of the organs that can become stressed this year is the spleen, which is associated with worry. Last year has already conditioned us to think about the future in catastrophic terms. You may now routinely find yourself entering a worry spiral that is characteristic of this time of generalized anxiety. Remember that you can’t eliminate risk from your life. The pandemic has highlighted how much our lives are comprised of unknowns, but we still fail to realize how much our everyday is run on faith. Each time we get into a car, we have faith that the speeding metal contraption does not malfunction and send us careening into the guardrail. Everyday we wake up with faith that the earth’s magnetic field will shield us from solar storms that could result in a geomagnetic apocalypse. The fact is, the fabric of reality is composed of much more uncertainty than certainty. If we lived our life based on fear rather than faith, we could not function. 

Psychoanalysts describe two ways of relating to uncertainty as dynamic safety and static safety. Dynamic safety allows for breaches and ruptures in safety, and consequently repairs. Static safety is defined as a flaccid, permanent coziness. Dynamic safety is measured by resiliency - having been stress-tested, this safety develops strength and integrity. Most importantly, in its inclusion of discomfort and risk, dynamic safety makes space for our evolution and nourishes our appetite for adventure. Safety in its “flaccid” form is not the goal for living life. To truly live in these times requires an immense bravery. To truly live means that you allow life to touch you in all of its danger and wonder, suffering and ecstasy. 

Rumi, the great Sufi poet said it best: “Many actions which seem cruel are from a deep friendship. Many demolitions are actually renovations.” Whether change is good or bad evolves with our perspective. The greatest change that can happen this year is the transformation of yourself. Make choices that are based on your life changing, not staying the same. Nourish the seeds of transformation growing within you. A life that dances with the unknown is an exciting life. Revel in the mystery and embrace who you are becoming.

United States Natal Chart Part 1: America The Merciful

This month, America turns 244 years old as a nation. As this country plunges into unprecedented historic times, this month makes for a good time to reflect on this nation’s fate and destiny, interpreted through Bazi Chinese Astrology. 

The Child Pillar, which is derived from the year of birth, describes one’s initial “qi” imprint and the formation of one’s inherent character. In this pillar, America is a Yang Fire Monkey. The Yijing (I Ching) hexagram associated with this combination is "Liberation" (解). 

The Monkey is the revolutionary of the zodiac, a pioneer and renaissance individual. Clever, creative and pioneering, Monkey is always inventing, often becoming a polymath. In the jungle, they are an obstacle course runner (think monkey bars). If Monkey does not have enough obstacles in their life, they will go out and create them. 

Coupled with Yang Fire, which is symbolized by the sun, this revolutionary Monkey will blaze ahead, always creating new innovative paths. Yang Fire adds an emboldened naiveté to the Monkey, making one who indiscriminately and brazenly plows forward, having little regard for their impact and for those who fall to the wayside.

This particular combination of Yang Fire Monkey is attributed to the Yijing Life Hexagram of Liberation. Life Hexagrams help us understand the core themes of our incarnation and how to best direct our character. They are the password that unlocks the highest version of our inner software, activating our destiny. America the Yang Fire Monkey, the audacious revolutionary, must learn the life lesson of Liberation. 

The hexagram Liberation is made up of the elements of Thunder (Shock), which frees us from difficulty, and the element of Water (The River of Ghosts). Liberation is described as an escape, a fever breaking, being released from the noose of a hostile fate, awakening from illusion, and an exorcism. 

In the Declaration of Independence, "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" are three unalienable rights. It is time for us to update our understanding of Liberty, not as an individualistic state of achievement (Liberty the noun) but as an ongoing collective practice (Liberation as a verb). 

Liberation as a process is akin to being in a thunderstorm. An enormous amount of pressure builds up and surrounds us. When the flood gates open, we cannot take lightly the force that creates release. It is overwhelming, terrifying but good. Remember that the volatility of this time conspires in our favor. Through the process of Liberation, the grounds are cleared for new growth.

There are both internal and external sources of Liberation. We may be liberated through our environment and the support of others, and we may also create our own release. The core of Liberation is the lesson of mercy. Liberation is sweet when it comes to us. Liberation is even sweeter if we can bestow it on others. The Yijing explains this type of release as the greatest of generosities. It is America’s destiny to learn to be merciful. 

Nobody gets to Liberation having already been free. Nobody receives this hexagram without an experience of deep oppression and enslavement. The Yijing describes the time preceding Liberation as time spent in the grave. The spirit is guided in the Underworld, the Ghost River, or the river of the past. To achieve Liberation, America must resolve her fate.

America is not something outside of ourselves. The great social, cultural and economic experiment of the United States is not simply an idea that we can criticize and extricate ourselves from. Nationhood is something we all participate in. It is part of our civic duty to understand our destiny as a nation so we can embody its highest ideals, and to resolve our fate by facing our past and righting the wrongs of our history. 

For my newsletter on the connection between Liberation and Responsibility, checkout my horoscope from June 2018. 

This newsletter is Part 1 of a series where I will expound on the full Four Pillars (Bazi Chinese Astrology) natal chart of America. Stay tuned!

Yin Metal Snake: Contradiction and Estrangement

Snake, the great mystic of the zodiac, is ruled by the element of Yang Fire. Yang Fire controls Yin Metal, melting and liquifying metal until it loses all form. Because of these opposing elements - Yang Fire and Yin Metal, the Yijing hexagram associated with this month is “kui” 睽, or Contradiction. 

“Kui” is also translated as opposition and estrangement. It represents going into isolation, exile, and being outcast. It denotes the act of diverging, deviating, and turning away. It represents those who voyage outside the norms, such as an intermediary, shaman, or wandering sage. This is a journey into the borderlands and shadowlands that develops one’s ability to see through the ancestor’s eyes. 

Five months into 2020, estrangement is now the new normal. We have arrived in the hinterlands and we have to figure out how to settle in. Exile is now our new home. The pandemic has made us aliens to our former reality, defamiliarizing what we knew to be familiar. This time is characterized by reality being flipped on its head and we are being forced to face the contradictions that have surfaced as a result. 

The Yin Metal Snake teaches us that tension through opposites is more fruitful than easy alliances. The unity created by contrasting forces is more meaningful than easy collaborations. In WWII, the Allied forces consisted of the US, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and China. What gives this alliance deep significance is that it was not easily achieved: many contradictory motivations, values, and forces had to come together in order to make their common goal possible. We are facing similar historic times, where we must rely on the forces of dissonance in order to achieve our greater common goals.  

There are other ways to interpret this theme. With the death toll climbing due to Covid-19, one could say the planet is populated with many spirits and ghosts at this time. The energy of Contradiction signifies transforming the negative power of the ghost world into creative tension with the living. Symbolically, this is a time of reckoning with the “ghosts” that haunt our living reality. In other words, the subconscious layers of intent and delusion are being met with real impact and consequences.

The broken systems of extraction and exploitation, the fallouts and bailouts perpetuated by greed, the lack of basic safety nets are all coming out of the shadows. Even in the most mundane scale of personal hygiene and public conduct, we are being called to take utmost responsibility for the collective impact of our individual choices. We must decide how to take the negative power of our “ghosts” - what haunts our choices and actions - into alignment and integrity with the living. 

This month we are asked to take inventory of the contradictory forces of our lives and seek their creative potential. Remember that all things were created by the primordial dance of yin and yang. In fact, the yin/yang symbol is actually an animation: it shows yin and yang creating each other, which results in the birth of all things in the universe. From the height of darkness (yin) lies the seed of yang; at the height of light (yang) lies the seed of yin. All things are born from their opposites. 
 

Working with the themes of this month:

We must see the forces of resistance in our lives as fuel for creative tension. One example of this is working with the themes of discipline and relaxation. If your home life is your primary environment right now, knowing the difference between self-care and self-indulgence can be difficult to discern. Self-care is not simply about feeling good. True self-care actually comes from discipline; self-discipline then leads to taking accountability. Self-care cannot be accomplished without being totally responsible for yourself.

Sometimes self-care is doing the things that do not feel good. It is going to the doctor, seeing your therapist, making a difficult phone call, taking care of your paperwork, your eating habits, your finances. We’ve bifurcated self-care as an escape from responsibility. But true self-care is being totally responsible for your own health, well-being and happiness. One of the biggest lessons that can be gleaned from quarantine is how our inner autonomy is born from outer self-control. 

How have you been navigating oppositional forces at this time? There are too many themes to write about in depth, so here are just a few to reflect on.

Allowing and resisting

Freedom and limitations

Grief and praise

The carnal and the digital

Boundaries and interconnectedness

Opening and closing

Death and hunger for life


How might these paradoxes create, inform and create a dynamic relationship with each other? How do they generate creative tension and deeper meaning in your life? 

2020 Year of the Yang Metal Rat

NOWHERE = Now + Here

Year of the Yang Metal Rat:
Waiting, Patience, and Opening of the Cosmic Hole

January 25th, 2020 marks the beginning of the Yang Metal Rat Year. 

The new year of the Yang Metal Rat is symbolized by the time of rainmaking rituals. The zodiac animal Rat which is the totem of water, is being bound by limitations, the gates of Yang Metal. Water is being withheld like rainclouds in the sky. This year corresponds with the Yijing Hexagram “Xu,” or Waiting. 

Rites of rainmaking represent waiting for the right time, or positive waiting. By participating in the rainmaking ritual, one’s awareness must shift. The ritual creates a gap in time, or the opening of the Cosmic Hole. The art of waiting requires cultivating our sensitivity to timing. The process requires great effort - it is not passive or dumb inaction. 

This is the time to develop the virtue of patience. We are caught in the midst of changes, socially, culturally and politically. The old power structures are shifting, generating new ideas and releasing bound energy. Our circumstances, desires and goals are caught in the changes of what is breaking down and reorganizing. Although new creative forces are germinating, they cannot be planted or grow roots until the environment become more stable. 

The new self, both collective and individual is forming. Though you are waiting, your authentic being continues to grow. We can only emerge if we wait for the right moment to be born. This is called entering the Cosmic Hole:  this time is full of mystery and there is nothing we can do but wait.

But we have forgotten how to wait - everything must happen if not instantaneously, then in a hurry. Meanwhile all of existence waits for the right moment, but we have abandoned the space of waiting. It is foolish to plant seeds when the ground is frozen. Waiting allows us the space to seek the proper nourishment, to fortify ourselves, to prepare for the right time. Waiting is how we build ourselves.

The opening of the Cosmic Hole is an invitation to be Nowhere.  There is nowhere to be, except the only place to be: exactly where you are right now. There is no such thing as coming and going. This is a sacred time to return to what you truly are. Some people call this going inwards, or an inner journey. But all journeys are outer journeys - there is no such thing as going inwards because you’re already there. You are nowhere - now and here.

This is a humbling time because you realize you don’t need to create any temples to find your purpose or practice your spirituality. You just have to sweep the steps of the temple that is you. It is not the glorious work of building new empires, it is the humbling work of polishing what already exists. What this time eventually reveals is truly awesome: your essential inner nature. 

The shadow of waiting is timidity, fear, or persevering needlessly. Remember that the time will arrive when the rains will come. Take advantage of the time of waiting by preparing yourself. It is actually a time of nurturance, great care, and attending to what is needed. It is the year to cultivate potential, because the time is still immature. Do not think of your waiting as an exhausting burden. We thrive in these times by carefully and joyously tending to our inner being. Through our patience and attunement to timing, we become the master of our own ceremonies. 

Yang Wood Dog

Maturity and the Inner Child

October 8th marks the beginning of the Yang Wood Dog month. Yang Wood represents the youngest life phase (think of a baby sprout shooting out of the soil), making this time equivalent to the month of the puppy. The Dog totem on the other hand is one of the elder animals in the zodiac, a protector of traditional values that is concerned with duty and responsibility. By combining the conservatism of the Dog with the youth of Yang Wood, this month's theme is Maturity and the Inner Child.


Maturity is the responsibility of being oneself. The more you mature, the more conscious you become. The more conscious you become, the more you must take responsibility for your life. Consciousness is not about expanding your mind, it is about becoming more responsible for who you are. When you feel stuck, you are experiencing an inner resistance to this responsibility. You must face your fear of growing up: the fear of taking more responsibility for your life. The child is unaware of this - they can participate in their life, but they are not conscious of it.

How do you integrate your inner child with being a mature adult? Consciousness is like a blossoming flower - once you begin to bloom you cannot return inside the bud. But you can choose to blossom with ever more availability to the wonder, adventure and playfulness of life. There are no guarantees on the road to awakening, but you can choose to face the unknown with curiosity, humor and amazement. You can choose to live freely, which is to drop out of the serious world.

Seriousness created the institutions of control and managing reality - religion, economy, philosophy, politics. Seriousness runs the mechanisms of authority, but you can choose to take responsibility by authoring your own life. By making conscious choices and not deferring to what has been established - you question, reconsider, imagine and create. This is how you carry your inner child through to adulthood, in a dance of ever-unfolding awareness.

Yang Metal Horse

The Time Warrior: Refinement Through Endurance

Representing both the midday hour and the rise of summer, the Horse is yang energy incarnate. It is the image of the sun blazing at high noon and fruits ripening - an enduring source of fertility and abundance.

Yang Metal is represented by weaponry. Like an ax or sword, what begins as raw material becomes useful through heating, hammering and tempering. The process of continual pressure and refinement gives Yang Metal purpose and power. Coming together to create the great armored Horse, this month shows us the power to acquire great abundance through the development of concentrated, enduring force.

The Yang Metal horse is a great vehicle to carry out our desires and goals. When we learn how to drive and motivate this medium, we can orient our will towards self-imposed aspirations. We are learning about the process of refinement that can only occur through the capacity to endure, outlast and persevere. A gusty wind or violent storm may have awesome power in the moment, but does not last long. Like a river flowing into the vast ocean, what has been developing over time cannot easily evaporate and disappear. The ability to dedicate yourself leads to the power and potential to become a fully realized person. 

What are the mechanisms that make endurance possible? The ancient kings in China had a water vessel that acted as a warning device, standing upright when empty and tipping over when full. This was a reminder that fullness will inevitably lead to decline. When the sun rises, the moon sets; when happiness ends, one is sad. To develop constancy in any one thing, you must protect and temper it from reaching capacity.  For instance, ignorance engenders knowledge. Martial power and courage is preserved by fear. Satiety cannot continue without hunger. So in order to use anything fully, you must take the path of not being full.

We have entered the month of the Time Warrior: understanding how to use time as a primary partner and collaborator. This month we are becoming an endurance artist, where we learn to create our lives using time as our medium. Endurance generates power through friction - the longer the time, the more there is to push against. This is another way of understanding how to temper fullness: we develop constancy through the principles of resistance. 

This month we are learning the difference between material power and spiritual power. Material power is demonstrated through full, sudden force. Spiritual power is achieved through development, or force over time. Every time we meet true adversity in our lives - when no amount of physical power can transform the situation and we surrender to time itself - we come out the other side having gained soul force. Soul force is not just about surrendering to one’s circumstances, however. It is an inner warriorship, which can also be utilized as a political strategy for creating transformational social and spiritual change. Examples can been seen through Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who demonstrated the principle of soul force through non-violent resistance. 

By contrast, how do we know when we have tipped into unhealthy endurance, or endurism? Endurism is an attachment to closure and fullness, the desire for an end result at any cost. Endurance on the other hand, is motivated by refinement, engaging in a distillation process of the self and the situation. One is additive, the other reductive. Endurance is a practice in trust, where meaning and resolution are emergent and creative. Endurism relies on gripping and white-knuckling, a process that closes and numbs the self. It becomes an act of tolerance, normalizing suffering by resisting change. Conversely, endurance is a process of adaptation, requiring openness to create change. Because transformation naturally occurs through continual refinement, the need to endure will instinctively come to an end. 

In ritual terms, refinement through endurance is the offering one makes, which invokes blessings from the ancestors. It is the sacrifice one performs, such as the painstaking process of cultivating and stewarding the land so that one can reap the profit of ripened crops. It suggests success and pleasure when the human world and ancestral world are connected through the sacrifice of a cooked meal. In ancient times, this was done through the dǐng 鼎: a cast bronze sacrificial vessel. Often covered with animal imagery, this cauldron cooked the ritual meal to be offered to the spirits. 

When we give endurance ritual attention, we fix symbols and omens from spirit, giving them staying power in our lives. This month, your situation is a meal that needs to be cooked, your offering which connects you to the ancestors. The Time Warrior is your dǐng, the vessel of time that prepares your sacrifice. You are learning the sensibilities required to recognize when a moment is undercooked or overdone. We refine the self by cultivating our willpower and learn constancy by measuring when to persist and when to be flexible. Remember the path of refinement does not want fullness: endurance is preserved by hesitation; steadiness is preserved by rhythm. The ability to endure and last is illustrated in this statement by the Daoist classic, the Wénzǐ: “A river can go far because it goes along twisting and turning. A mountain can go high because it slopes.”

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Discover Your Time Warrior…

This month’s Journey is a guided meditation to connect with the Yang Metal Horse, the Time Warrior, who will be teaching you about refinement through endurance. This journey is about learning how to collaborate with time. If you feel stuck in a situation, unsure about how to persist, how long to endure, and/or when to let go, you can use this meditation as a tool and guide. 

Using breathing, imagery, music and connecting with your body, this Journey exercise is designed to complement this month's forecast. This audio is modeled after techniques for psychological and spiritual growth, such as psychosynthesis, waking dream therapy, Daoist internal alchemy, and trauma intervention.

If you want to go deeper into the themes of this month by meeting your inner Time Warrior, you can purchase the 12 minute audio below. 

Yin Earth Snake

NOT KNOWING & THE IMAGINATION
also... CHAOS & CONTROL

Last month, the Dragon compelled us to make firm decisions, leading to a moment of breakthrough. This month of the Yin Earth Snake, we discover that beyond the threshold of breaking through is Not Knowing. The primary objective of Snake and Dragon is transformation, and the Snake is the yin counterpart to the Dragon’s yang. Whereas the Dragon brought us a flash of illumination, the aha! moment of awareness, the Snake leads us into darkness and the unknown, the Great Mystery where all possibilities are born. 

Yin Earth Snake is analogous to “The Yellow Woman” of Daoist folklore. The Yellow Woman represents true intent and true faith in the center of our being. Truthfulness is associated with the Earth, represented by the color yellow. Woman refers to the mother: the progenitor and genetrix of all things. The first ancestress in Chinese creation myth is depicted with the body of a snake. The Yellow Woman symbolizes our true will to awaken our original spirit, the capacity to return to our source, and she resides in all of us. 

To achieve a state of deep inward journeying requires being a great minimalist. The Yellow Woman is connected to the originating chaos, pregnant with possibility. She knows the universe contains everything you need. In the microcosmic universe of her own body, everything she wants is just waiting to emerge. This simplicity is the understanding that everything we need already exists,  should we cultivate the space for it to arrive.

Minimalism gives us room to breathe and see things clearly. The more empty we can be, the more freedom we can have. Conversely the more we have, the more we must hold and grasp, the more we are burdened. To be minimal invites spontaneity, allowing our  lives to speak through us. Regardless of external conditions, simplicity thrives everywhere because it is rooted in the essential.

The Yellow Woman knows that in order for anything to emerge, one must withdraw. Like a snake, when we shed our outer artifice, we arrive at the center of our being. The truth of what we are is our sincerity within. At our core is emptiness - being empty of obstructions and illusions that separate us from our reality.  Like fish swimming in the ocean, it is this permeable space within that allows the water of life to move through us. Identity is known, fixed states of being, whereas the true self is an eternal void, open and fluid with possibilities. It is a mystery even to ourselves. This month we are are asked to minimize the identifiable self to make room for discovery of the unknown.  Those who cannot be exceedingly small cannot create space for emergence. 

Emergence is a practice in gradualism. Truth and sincerity is revealed in layers of ever-more subtleness. Truthfulness within being put into practice outwardly takes slow cultivation. When we wait, we commit ourselves to a state of not knowing. We open ourselves to wonder, exploration and discovery. 

Not knowing is not a passive state, nor is it ignorance - a rigid refusal to know. Not knowing is an active listening, illogical meandering, existing in non-local and nonproductive time. It is being in liminality, where space and time swing open and close like a gate. It requires evoking the archetype of the artist: the ability to discover and bring into existence that which previously did not exist. 

By placing yourself in a state of not knowing, you enter the realm of the waking dream, the imagination. The imagination is the ability to go out of fixed states, into creative generative realms. It is existing in non-dual time, not belonging to the past or future. In the realm of the imagination, you do not follow time - you create time. 

The capacity to imagine and enter the unknown is inherent in all of us. Yet many of us experience the unknown as a fearful place. Why does the abyss, the birthplace of mystery, strike terror in us? In the West, there is no working metaphysics of chaos and the unknown. Chaos is not a force worthy of its own existence, nor is it seen as essential to existence, having an intrinsic role and place in the universe. Rather, it exists to be controlled, conquered and defeated. 

Serpentine monsters abound in legends, including the Greek mother of monsters Echidna, the Midgard Serpent of Norse mythology, the British Lindworm, as well as Scylla and Medusa in Homer’s Odyssey. All of these serpentine monsters represent untamable chaos, the tumultuous mystical force, stirring in us a primordial fear of the uncontrollable and unknown. The way to deal with them is to tame and conquer these monsters through the ingenuity of human rationality, force and will. When a culture has a pathological obsession with closure, otherwise known as control, chaos has no place. 

The Western trajectory of moving away from chaos, where the anarchic primordial soup exists only so that order can arrive, is antithetic to the laws of nature. Physics shows us that the fundamental force of change and transformation in the universe is entropy. All stars in the universe will eventually burn out, and life feeds off of the heat and light these stars give off on their path to obliteration.  Our lives depend on the unrelenting increase of disorder, the fertile chaos.

Our relationship with the wild untamed world is that of fear. In practical life, this leaves little room for our own raw, wild natures. The dominant belief in Western culture is that human beings have dominion over their individual lives. The narrative of progress - movement always towards a refined and improved state - has led to the development of tools and technology in order to triumph over our external environment. 

But we are being forced to shift. Our mastery over nature has led to colossal problems. Our technology has brought us to the nuclear age, where the only way to conquer the weapons that will annihilate us is to conquer our will to use them.  Climate scientists report that we have just 12 years to cut our carbon emissions by half before we reach irreversible environmental catastrophe. The defining theme of the “New Age,” or the Age of Aquarius is humanity’s transition to an inverse orientation: from mastery over nature to mastery over the self. This is the biggest directive of our era, our price of admission for being born on this planet at this time. 

We must learn how to navigate and enter into the unknown, to the inner potential that allows for the transformation necessary at the deepest levels of our psyche. Our fear of the unknown paralyzes our collective imagination. Because we do not know how to exist in chaos, we lack the courage for divergent thinking, to explore creative potential realities. Thus, we are terrified to create real change in our lives, society and culture. 

What if our god(s) were not just models of harmony, rationality and order? What if we had a spirituality that was inclusive of randomness, spontaneity and unpredictability? What if we prayed to deities of destruction,  confusion, madness and mayhem - not asking to conquer and control them, but to honor and worship them, seeing them as aspects of ourselves? What if we practiced rites of reaching into the unknown: entering into trance or possession, speaking in tongues, embarking on vision quests? Or rituals of impermanence, such as the creation and destruction of sand mandalas, where we let go of our attachment to fixed states? 

This month is the prime time to use the imagination to develop hidden avenues of human capacity and potential. Call on your inner Yellow Woman to give you strength for your journey into ever more subtle layers of truth. When we do only what is known to us, we collapse into fate, repeating the karmic cycle of time. On the other hand, remember that moving into destiny is always a move towards the unknown. 

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Journey into the Unknown…

This month’s Journey is a guided meditation to connect with the Yin Earth Snake, who will help you enter into the unknown, The Great Mystery, the birthplace of Imagination. 

Using breathing, imagery, music and connecting with your body, this Journey exercise is designed to complement this month's forecast. This audio is modeled after techniques for psychological and spiritual growth, such as psychosynthesis, waking dream therapy, Daoist internal alchemy, and trauma intervention.

If you want to go deeper into the themes of this month (Not Knowing and the Imagination, or Chaos and Control) through the power of visualization, you can purchase the 12 minute audio below. 

Yang Earth Dragon

Decisiveness and Breakthrough

In Chinese mythology, the Dragon is the rainmaker, a magician who possesses the ability to change natural phenomena.  At the moment when clouds have reached their maximum density and darkness, Dragon is the one who releases rain, endowed with the power of liberation. The only mystical being in the zodiac, the Dragon flies between heaven and earth, a symbol of unifying the spirit and material realms. Dragon time is the last month of spring and the time of breakfast, when nature is in its most dramatic transformation: the rise of yang energy. 

Yang Earth is Dragon’s native element and this month is a time of entering the Primal Dragon’s Gate.  It marks a transition time, a moment of crisis, and entry into liminal space where structures dissolve and there is a re-ordering of fundamental principles. This month is characterized by coming to a crossroads and stepping across the threshold.  It requires letting go of the past and the conjuring the power to lead your life. This leads to an important transition during a powerful situation: the moment right before a breakthrough.

Yang Earth Dragon possesses the ability to transgress norms, to go outside the limits due to its mystical power. It represents reaching the breaking point and surpassing all established frontiers. This is a time of excess: pushing your principles beyond their normal limits and accepting the movement this inevitably brings. 

During this time, you must confront the structures of your life that are in danger of collapse. To reach the breakthrough moment denotes departure and surpassing: if your situation doesn’t nourish you and you are unable to stir up new growth, you must go past it, leave. To work with Dragon energy means being unafraid to order things yourself and impose a different direction. When you do this, the spirits of transgression will be invoked; the guides at the crossroads awakened by your call for a new direction. 

We are changing whether we like it or not, despite our intention or perception of change. “Change” and “Transformation” connote two different processes, designated in the Chinese concepts 變 bian and 化 hua. Bian denotes external, momentary or apparent change. Hua denotes fundamental and essential change, a true transformation. The difference between a fleeting change and a powerful breakthrough is one’s decisiveness.

In the Yijing (The Book of Changes), the hexagram for “Decisiveness” is also defined as “Parting”.  What is difficult about decisiveness is that it denotes separation. Being decisive must imply parting with the self that no longer serves our decision to change. We must part with what is unnecessary, un-beneficial and untrue. Because of this, perceptiveness is at utmost importance at this time. Becoming decisive involves a powerful transition: a redefinition of the Self to get to the truth. The Dragon is a hybrid animal (sometimes depicted as part lion, snake, fish or turtle), showing us that we must release the idea of the Self as a fixed identity. To embody the power of the Dragon is to connect with the Self’s true nature: the capacity for change. 

How to work with this month’s animal and element:

What is the process that leads us to decisiveness, and how do we know we are making good decisions? The Dragon teaches us that returning to our truth, our center of balance, is not achieved through compromise. This month we are learning how to achieve harmony through the element of surprise. The Dragon is often seen as reckless, however mastering the element of surprise is actually about alchemy - precise measurement and calculation. It is knowing that one does not use disorder to attack chaos, or in other words, responding to fire with fire, or a flood with water. 

The way to establish balance is the activation of oppositional force to create an intentional disruption, thus creating a transformation. Calmness surprises the fanatic. Humility surprises the greedy. Being liberal surprises the hoarder. It is using order to surprise the confused. Being broad to surprise those that are narrow. It is creating emptiness where others try to hurt us. Through the work of the alchemist, refinement to a pure state can be achieved. 

There are times for compromise and times that call for unequivocal, firm resolution. It is through our steadfast resolutions that we breakthrough. You must be resolute about what you are separating yourself from - denying  power to what you are parting with. Let resolution spring from your heart and the truth be announced openly whenever possible. The process of making a public resolution requires that you examine all parts of yourself. Make a verbal resolution to depart from outdated opinions and part with old patterns. Remember that one who is too full can develop no further and can only invite collapse. 

Be resolute to change, but know that you are not promised what is on the other side. What promises did you make with your spirituality? Does your spirituality promise you a life-raft? Does it assure that you won’t get wet? Once you reach the bank on the other side, are you promised redemption, salvation, happiness? Keep in mind that this time is only one of many crossings. If you are fixated on an ideal destination, you will never achieve perfection and end up in a perpetual transitory space. 

In a time of breakthrough where we step into the unknown, we must examine the bargains we have made to manage uncertainty. Do you believe that your spirituality will lead you to visions, wisdom, freedom, healing, and/or clairvoyance? Spirituality is not a transaction. Just like a friendship, if you see relationships only through the lens of what you can get, your friendship will not last. Spirituality is a relationship: it is a place where we go to give, not get. 

Wherever it is in your life that you are generous - giving without expectation of receiving - that is your spirituality showing up. It is where you go beyond your own needs, not self-cultivation for its own ends. Breakthrough is not a guarantee: it is an offering, a sacrifice of your former self. This month is a time of internal alchemy, an examination of where you are being attached to staying the same. 

Decisiveness results from accumulated force and the month of the Dragon is not a time for vacillation. We can now act with great strength and power and with practice, the time it takes to make the right decision can be instantaneous. We need to arrange the world around us and inside us to support our transformation. This month asks, are you making decisions that support your life changing or do you make choices that support your life remaining the same?

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My free gift to you this month:

Download A Journey with the Yang Earth Dragon, a guided meditation to identify your inner Dragon Spirit.

Using breathing, relaxation, imagery and connecting with your body, this Journey exercise is designed to complement this month's forecast. If you feel called to connect deeper with the themes of this month: Decisiveness and Breakthrough, please listen/download the audio below. 

Yin Fire Rabbit

Victimhood and the Empowered Heart

Yin Fire Rabbit is the totem for this year’s second month of spring. As new life is blossoming and bursting forth, this time embodies the flourishing qi of childhood and the freshness of youth. The ancient pictograph for the rabbit sign is 卯, showing doors opening to spring. When innocence is awakened, trust and openness follows. 

Yin Fire represents inner strength coming from the heart and is symbolized by a candle flame. Inner strength is built through the themes of annihilation and revival. Yin Fire is both a small flame that can easily be extinguished as well as the new spark of regeneration. Even in times of powerlessness, renewal follows the darkness of night. Yin Fire reminds us that the human heart is stronger than adversity. 

Innocence is the natural genius of who you are, interacting with the spontaneous creativity of the Dao. Innocence is pure, unadulterated power that sleeps within your very being. Through unhealthy family patterning, cultural conditioning and traumatic experiences we adopt a dysfunctional self-image.  We become less and less in touch with the innate source of who we are, falling into the shadow side of innocence: victimhood. 

When our inner victim has authority over us, we cannot take full authorship of our lives. Living in duality, the victim by definition is aligned with being morally righteous, which assumes there is always another party to blame. The wounded heart sees the world through a system of reward and punishment, needing a logical explanation for all painful experiences. Victimhood is being trapped in a childlike relationship to the world, living in fear and loving conditionally. 

Victimhood can be addicting because it brings help and support from others. We are naturally dependent on others as a species and it is critical to our survival. However, unhealthy dependency is bred through an inability to trust oneself. This is natural for children because they can’t rely on themselves to survive. In order to have a functioning adulthood, we must learn self reliance. This means taking radical responsibility for yourself and what happens in your life. 

Escaping into victimhood is a form of self-abandonment. It is abdicating your power so that you can be rescued, taken care of and pitied. It is demanding retaliation and seeking affirmation from external sources. What lies beneath is a deep disconnect from one’ s innocent, authentic and innate power. Self-reliance on the other hand is learning to not abandon yourself, with others or through others. 

How to work with this month’s animal and element: 

Civilization is evolving from a culture of individuality to one of social consciousness, moving from self-empowerment to an empowered heart. In the chakra system, this is going from the 3rd chakra of self esteem to the 4th chakra, relating from the heart.  In Yijing divination,  we are moving from the lower trigram to upper trigram, from self interest to social awareness. This step is a huge consciousness leap and thus requires a spiritual awakening. The journey out of victim consciousness can only be done through learning the lesson of the child: that the process of continually discovering and loving ourselves lies not outside but within. 

Innocence in its true form is awakening to your empowered heart. When we stop seeking reprisal from the outside world, we can open ourselves to forgiveness. When we move beyond the victim paradigm, we find there is actually nothing left to forgive. We realize that everybody is a victim: all victims are victims of victims. Therefore, the binary paradigm of innocence and blame does not actually exist.

In Daoist medicine, the heart organ is the home of your 神, or spirit. When your heart is not empowered, meaning you have adopted a belief system that redemption is dependent on others, then you have given your spirit away. If you find yourself in a negative victim loop, then you must call your spirit back. You can do this ritualistically, through writing, breathing and visioning exercises, alone or witnessed by others. The key is to reunite with what the Buddhists call the drala principle, or your virginal, genuine and innocent perception of reality. 

With all the fresh, delicate new life blossoming in spring, we are reminded of the preciousness of existence. Rabbit arouses in us an instinct to protect, nurture and provide welfare. Yin Fire turns this desire inwards, so that we can identify the source of spring within ourselves. This month we are awakening to our innate power and prosperity, capable of surviving times of depletion and regenerating in times of abundance.

Yang Fire Tiger

Aggression and Efficacy

The Tiger in Chinese astrology rules the month when yang energy is becoming activated. It is the month when coldness melts away and animals come out of hibernation. It represents the vigor of birth and the strength needed to push past winter’s inertia. Although the Tiger is known for ferocity and power, the secret to its potency lies in its stripes - the alternation of black and orange, yin and yang. Large cats in the wild can sleep up to 20 hours a day. The secret behind their aggressive power is conservation of energy that borders on laziness. Even during the hunt, a Tiger can stalk its prey for hours, waiting patiently for the most optimal moment to employ explosive force. Because of this, it is a master of effective action.

This month is also ruled by Yang Fire, which is symbolized by the sun. All life on earth depends on direction. The rising and setting of the sun is the cadence that governs our activity and rest, giving life on this planet orientation and rhythm. All movement and stillness require a tempo of alternation that is in sync with the environment. There are times to receive and times that call for ferocity. To read and respond to nature with the full spectrum of our available potential is how we develop efficacy. 

When a Tiger hunts, it demonstrates maximum efficiency. Knowing precisely where you have and don’t have power helps you apply energy only where it is appropriate.  All hunters know this formula of harmonizing effort with their surroundings. An archer becomes hypersensitive to the environment, reading the temperature and winds, applying hyper focused energy directed towards their target. When the timing is right, all that is left is to let go.

How to work with this month’s animal and element: 

There has never been a time in human history where so much of our lives are handed to us. It used to be that in order to have basic things in your life, we had to make them. From our housing to our clothes, the chair we sit on to the food we eat, we now spend our time acquiring things rather than on the process of making them. This is why so many people feel disconnected from their creativity in modern urban life:  we do not participate in creating the things that we have. Relating to our world through consumption is living in extreme passivity. 

The hidden reality of consumption is pervasive violence - deforestation, abuse of labor and exploitation make mass scale consumption possible. However, this violence is experienced in the daily lives of western civilization as ubiquitous passivity. This numbing state means that innate aggression is repressed and therefore seeks an outlet in our collective psyche. You can look to all of our forms of entertainment, from film to sports to see how much violence exists in our lives as fantasy and fetish. 

What is aggression and why does it need expression? It is a primal energy that is native to our embodied existence. In fact, you would not exist today without it. Ask a mother that has given birth if the process of labor did not demand aggression. This type of yang energy is also demonstrated in less extreme forms - initiative, assertion, willpower and passion all require aggression. Even creativity cannot happen without an attack on idleness. The truth is, you cannot be effective in life without the proper use of aggression. 

Efficacy is about directed aggression, not arbitrary aggression. Like syncing our energies with the rhythm of the sun, direction is how we make aggression useful. Daoist masters are sometimes depicted riding a tiger, a symbol of self-mastery. Through self-knowledge and discipline, we learn to direct our wild and ferocious natures; they become of service to us. We find the way to use all our innate drives, not discarding any aspect of our inner nature. 

Efficacy is activating your whole human potential, meaning you must be awake to your entire nature. You must be sensitive and responsive to the whole world, animating your gentleness as well as your vigor without arbitrary action. Daoist wisdom teaches us that the way of the sage is to be in harmony. Being magnanimous, warm and gentle must be balanced with being strict, stern and straightforward. Wisdom is learning how to harmonize hardness with softness. Too much strictness results in rigidity. Too much love results in indulgence, which is ultimately ineffectual.

This month asks, Where are you not being effective? Do you have a practice for exerting healthy aggression in your life? How can you apply the right energy in harmony with the needs of the time? Remember that yin and yang create each other. In order to generate movement, you must begin with its foundation, which is rest. Conversely, the potential for rest is found in movement. The dots in the yin yang symbol show us that the fullest expression of anything lies the seeds of its opposite.  If you are in the pursuit of peace, receptivity, and healthy femininity in your life, you must also have outlets for firmness, rigor and exercising your durability. 

🐗 2019 Year of the Yin Earth Pig / Boar 🐗

Integration and Submission

The Pig or Boar is one of the most energetically ambiguous animals in the zodiac. It is the quintessential symbol of domesticity yet maintains an instinct for the wild. Preferring a languid life of comfort and withdrawal, it is nevertheless admired for perceptive and prestigious leadership. It is the embodiment of a yin exterior that holds yang power within, an elegant example of integration. While gentle and adaptable in appearance, the Pig teaches us about our inner strength and courage. 

This new year is also ruled by Yin Earth, which is symbolized by fertile, soft soil. It demonstrates the qualities of receptivity, invisible labor, acceptance, humility, nurturance and patience. The earth possesses a power unique to itself: the ability to generate new life. The earth accepts all death, rot and decay that lies upon it and brings forth new existence. All beings rely on the earth for sustenance, being the foundation on which all life stands. Both good and evil find home and are supported by the earth. Because it does not judge or reject, it is significant to all. Through indiscriminate submission, it is all-powerful. 

Conversely, last year ‘s Yang Earth Dog was a time of exercising judgement and separation, acting to reveal the areas of dogmatism and tribalism in society. The year forced us to define our values, pressured us to form packs, call out against injustice, guard against enemies and put up a fight. This year, the Yin Earth Pig brings our quest for truth and integrity home to the most personal level. Our newly defined values will need to resonate throughout all our relationships. Rather than incriminating in a “us vs them” fashion, we must turn our attention to our relationship to home, family and self. This is the  principle of integration. 

Megalomania and authoritarianism is on the rise, from America to the U.K., Brazil, Philippines, Turkey, Russia and Venezuela. The Dog would focus on the egregious behavior of these despotic leaders, assigning blame and asserting a morally superior code. The submissive Pig sees beyond the concept of good vs. evil, asking instead how the rise of fascism elucidates the needs and problems of an age characterized by transition and uncertainty. 

An authoritarian personality has a pathological need for control that rises to significance in a climate of political and economic instability. Its aggressive over-compensation for inferiority is born out of trauma and a cynical view of humanity. Fear and anxiety abound when a worldview devoid of empathy becomes populated by enemies. This type of personality resonates now because feelings of powerlessness are seduced by external demonstrations of brute force. 

The Yin Earth Pig is the precise alternative to this show of strength. The Pig exemplifies holding your energy deeply within, even hiding your talents and power when a situation does not support you. In Daoist philosophy, power is harnessed through the path of flexibility - rigidity will lead one to break. When we practice submission, we seek power not through demonstration but from its source. 

For instance, the use of weaponry is a symptom of weakness. Weapons are always the tool of the weak - that is why they are needed. Although there is a momentary exhibition of strength, it is dependent on an external means. Even a hunter depends on a weapon to kill an animal, revealing the hunter’s innate deficiency in comparison to the prey. If you are mugged at gunpoint, your attacker is in a status of scarcity. The year of the Pig is a ripe time to perceive and re-define true power so that we don’t fall into false projections of strength. 

How to work with this year’s animal and element: 

It is vital that we refrain from cynicism if we are are to develop a healthy worldview and heal our relationship to power. At the core of integration - the act of making whole - is the practice of interconnectedness, which requires a worldview that is not deprived of empathy. Dogma and rigidity exist in both the political Left and Right. As an antidote, we must create a compassionate reality with acts of willingness and vulnerability. When we practice our values on the most personal level, we see the highest form of courage is the availability of our hearts. 

Integration means letting go of our labels, status and identifiers that separate us from the truth of our interconnectedness. It is an opportunity to detach from our manufactured identity so that we can restore our friendship with all sentient beings, including the self. We acknowledge that when we do harm, we do harm to ourselves because we are not separate in ultimate reality.

Like being caught in a lightning storm, we are in an age where many things are seeking grounding right now. We can model ourselves after Yin Earth and become the ground in which frenetic energy can land and generate new life. It is only through the connection with the earth that new seeds can grow. We take from this example in nature that yang is born from the power of yin. 

The earth welcomes all things to rest and grow, bearing and nurturing them with its power. If we make ourselves broad like the earth, we become the basis on which all things stand. The industrious Pig, with its snout pointed to the ground, also embodies this concept of humility. By making oneself lower, all things eventually come to you.