Full Moon in Aries.

The Courage to Become.

Equilibrium is a moment. Balance is a living practice.

Freedom is not the absence of relationship. It is the courage to remain true within it. 

Courage is not the absence of fear. It is refusing to let fear decide who we become. 

What we have discerned must eventually become something we are willing to live.

At the New Moon in Virgo, we arrived carrying the availability harvested from Pisces to respond to Virgo's inevitable question: Available for what?

We looked at what had been entrusted to our care, discerned what required our attention, what asked for completion, what deserved renewed commitment, and what could finally be released.

The seed we planted was devotion to what matters.

We publish this offering on 23 September, the day of the September Equinox. The Full Moon in Aries, also called the Harvest Moon, arrives on 26 September, only days after.

Just for an instant, the Earth appears to offer an image of equilibrium: day and night approaching equality. 

And immediately, the balance begins to shift. In the North, the days grow shorter. In the South, they grow longer. 

The Equinox is not teaching us how to achieve equilibrium, but reminding us that equilibrium cannot be held. 

The world will not remain still. Day becomes night. The seaons turn. What flourishes returns beneath the Earth. Forms emerge, dissolve and become something else. Once we stop asking form to provide permanence, perhaps we can begin to savour the movement itself.

Balance must therefore be something different. Not an external condition in which opposing forces have finally stopped moving, but an inner capacity to remain centred while they do.

Where Virgo asked us to discern what matters, Aries asks whether we now have the courage to live accordingly.

Knowing is no longer enough. What will we do with what we know?

Aries is often associated with individuality, initiative, courage, instinct and action. Opposite it, the Sun in Libra illuminates relationship, reciprocity and the encounter with the other.

Together they reveal one of the oldest balances we are asked to inhabit: Myself and the other.

How do I remain true to myself without ceasing to love you?

How do I care for you without abandoning myself?

How do I honour our relationship without betraying my relationship with myself?

Balance does not require each side to receive the same, nor ask us to meet in the middle. True balance asks us to know when to yield and when to stand firm.

Sometimes Love says yes, other times it says no. Sometimes compassion asks us to remain. Sometimes truth begs us to leave.

Listen deeply enough to recognise what this moment requires. And then have the courage to act.

This may be Aries' medicine.

Not aggression. Not impulsiveness. Not asserting oneself at the expense of another. But the courage to become increasingly free from everything that prevents us from living what we know to be true.

Free from judgment, expectations and conditioning. Free from the need to satisfy inherited ideas of who we should be. From illusions that may once have protected us but now prevent us from becoming.

Fear may remain. Freedom does not require its disappearance. It asks only that fear no longer decides.

Perhaps this is part of the harvest of devotion planted at Virgo. When we truly discern what matters, eventually we must be willing to organise our lives around it.

Devotion becomes boundary, word, choice, action and the courage to say: this matters enough for me to live differently.

There is tenderness in such courage. A boundary does not have to become a wall. Truth does not need to become a weapon. Freedom does not require indifference.

We can say no with compassion. We can speak the truth without needing another to agree. We can protect what is sacred without condemning what lies beyond its boundary. We can tend our own needs while remaining present to the needs of others. We can love ferociously without possessing.

Perhaps this is what it means to discover balance within rather than demanding it from the world around us.

Neither clinging to what must pass nor resisting what is arriving, we remain devoted not to the form, but to what moves eternally through it.

Some of what we planted in Virgo can now be harvested.

Perhaps what is ready for us to harvest is courage.

The courage to act upon what we have discerned. The courage to establish the boundaries required to tend to what matters. The courage to speak what has become true. The courage to take the next necessary step. The courage to be who we are.

And what is not yet ready? Let it continue growing.

Not every seed must prove itself at this Harvest Moon. Some commitments need Winter. Some truths need silence. Some transformations ask to occur beneath the surface. Some of what we are tending now may only become visible in Spring. We do not need to pull the seed from the earth to make certain it is growing.

Virgo taught us to tend. Aries now teaches us to move.

And perhaps somewhere between them we discover the living balance: to tend patiently to what requires time, and to act courageously when the time has come.

Remember

Equilibrium is a moment. Balance is a living practice.

Freedom is not the absence of relationship. It is the courage to remain true within it.

Courage is not the absence of fear. It is refusing to let fear decide who we become.

What we have discerned must eventually become something we are willing to live.

Practice

Stand quietly with both feet firmly upon the Earth.

Take twelve slow and deep breaths.

Place one hand upon your heart and the other upon your belly.

Feel your own centre before thinking about anyone or anything outside yourself.

Then ask: What have I already discerned that I am now being asked to live?

Listen.

Notice where fear appears.

Do not try to remove it.

Simply ask: What does Love ask me to do?

Remain for a moment.

Then choose one action. A word that needs speaking. A boundary that needs honouring. A commitment that needs tending. A decision that needs making. A step that needs taking.

Only one.

Take it from your centre.

Journaling

• Where am I abandoning myself to preserve harmony with another?
• What truth am I now ready to speak with compassion?
• What action have I postponed because of judgment, expectation or fear?
• Who am I becoming when fear no longer decides for me?

Blessing

May I have the courage to live what I have discerned to be true.

May I know the difference between equilibrium and balance, and cease asking Life to remain still so that I may feel centred.

May I tend my relationship with myself without withdrawing from my relationship with others.

May my boundaries protect what is sacred without closing my heart.

May I know when to yield and when to stand, when to wait and when to act.

May I harvest with gratitude what is ready, and faithfully tend what still needs darkness, Winter and time.

And may this Full Moon in Aries kindle within us the courage to live freely, love ferociously, act decisively from the heart, and become, without regret, who we already are.

Yo lo Creo / I believe, and so it is.