The astrological winds are blowing and I’m being called inward  –  since June’s full moon lunar eclipse and Grand Cross on the 26th, in fact. Potent astrological alignments like this are invitations to go within, availing ourselves of rare super-charged transformational energies. They offer us the possibility of making a leap in consciousness. Personally, I feel like a veil has been lifted. Consciousness has shifted and I am different – oh so subtley, but palpably, the out-picturing of this yet unfolding.

Taking time for meditation each day is in no small way making a bid for spiritual power. In meditation we prepare to meet the Divine, accessing our conscious awareness, and our lives change in profound ways. At the very least, we ride the inevitable waves of change with more ease, grace, and equanimity. If we also incorporate a process of self-inquiry with the intention of processing and clearing our limited personality patterns, we find ourselves accessing greater and greater levels of transcendental light. We grow and change, moving steadily towards Absolute Truth and the experience of what is real beyond the personality.

There are many beautiful writings by sages and mystics who, across time, have written about the benefits of quieting the mind. The Lake of Beauty is a favorite poem of mine by a more contemporary mystic – Edward Carpenter. Can you feel the power of this poem as it calls you home to the truth of your nature – to Self?

The Lake of Beauty

Let your mind be quiet, realizing the beauty of the world,

and the immense, the boundless treasures that it holds in store.

All that you have within you, all that your heart desires,

all that your Nature so specially fits you for — that or the

counterpart of it waits embeded in the great Whole, for you.

It will surely come to you.

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Yet equally surely not one moment before its appointed time

will it come. All your crying and fever and reaching out of

hands will make no difference.

Therefore do not begin that game at all.

Do not recklessly spill the waters of your mind

in this direction and in that,

lest you become like a spring lost and

dissipated in the desert.

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But draw them together into a little compass, and hold them

still, so still;

And let them become clear, so clear — so limpid, so mirror-like;

at last the mountains and sky shall glass themselves in peaceful beauty,

and the antelope shall descend to drink and to gaze at his

reflected image, and the lion to quench his thirst,

and Love himself shall come and bend over and catch his

own likeness in you.