It is not uncommon these days to buy followers online or to use strategies for inflating the number of followers that have nothing to do with true connection.
Leaders sometimes create followings by “force or cunning, by conspiracy or by creating factions.” That sounds like today’s headlines but is actually from the commentary of Hexagram 17, Following in the I Ching, our hexagram host for this next week of Aries.
Hexagarm 17 even warns that “joyous movement can lead to evil consequences.”
Before charging forth and using that fiery martial energy of Aries on external followings, one is advised to use it to tune into one’s inner self. That is why the image of this hexagram describes the importance of a noble one at nightfall going inside for renewal and rest.
Jungian analyst Lisa Marchiano writes in The Vital Spark (perfect reading for Aries season, by the way):
But if we don’t have sufficient access to independence and fire, our tendency to focus on others can cause us to lose touch with ourselves and the people we were meant to become. We can become alienated from our souls, which leaves us feeling depleted and inauthentic. Then, we must return to ourselves by reuniting with our Lilith nature, our own “unbridled life urge which refuses to be assimilated.”
Jung wrote about how our personalities become diminished when we adapt to others, but those discarded parts aren’t lost forever: “Many—far too many—aspects of life which should also have been experienced lie in the lumber room among dusty memories; but sometimes, too, they are glowing coals under gray ashes.”
There is an eclipse this week duing the Libra full moon. Eclipse energies play out over the course of six months and tend to make it more difficult to cling to certainty in that area of your life. As Marchiano says, “Being connected with the central fire can be exhilarating, but it can also be terrifying.”
Therefore this is a perfect time to take a look at the lumber room floor, so to speak, and connect with the vital sparks awaiting in the glowing coals of your unlived life.
REFERENCES:
The Vital Spark: Reclaim Your Outlaw Energies and Find Your Feminine Fire by Lisa Marchiano, LCSW
I Ching or Book of Changes translated by Richard Wilhelm
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