Full Moon in Libra square Pluto ~ Creativity Healing Ritual

Note: Typically, my moon rituals center around creativity and a creative practice. Due to the current global situation, and the current astrology, the rituals for this month have been more generally focused on healing. Feel free to apply them in whatever ways feel most pertinent and useful for you right now.

If you joined me for the new moon ritual this month, you will have spent the last two weeks holding a personal or collective wounding in your awareness (perhaps consciously, but even if you forgot all about it or needed to “put it away,” it was still being compassionately held in your subconscious).

Today we have a new moon in Libra, which wants to find balance, fairness and justice (Libra is the scales)—but is at the same time being squared (challenged) by a lot of heavy energy.

Pluto, god of the underworld—of harrowing journeys that ultimately end in transformation—is conjunct (joined with) Jupiter—a typically benefic deity/planet, that is currently in a difficult placement (in its fall in the sign of Capricorn)—which brings expansion and sometimes exaggeration to whatever it touches.

These two planets are moving through Capricorn, a sign of tradition, of structures and infrastructures, of governments and institutions. This is a time of major upheaval, of drawing up the shadow—to ultimately reckon and reconcile with it—on personal and collective levels. (Obviously. We are all living through strange and harrowing times, and the astrology just reflects/ rhymes with this.)

These times remind us that suffering is not “fair,” that it is not doled out equally, logically, or with reason. All of us may be suffering, but not in equal or fair amounts. Communities of color and poor communities are suffering at a greater scale and scope than others during this pandemic. We’re not all experiencing loss on the same level. Pluto brings this inequity to the surface to be faced, and Libra asks us not to turn away. The challenge in this time is not to run away, but to bear witness, and then, for those who are able, to transmute the wounds of our lives and our culture.

So the ritual for this moon involves facing the wounds (Chiron) we have experienced (those we held and nurtured over the past two weeks), and transforming and transmuting (Pluto) them into higher levels and versions of themselves, and ourselves, to bring about greater equity, balance, and connection (moon in Libra). Or, at least working toward this ambitious intention.

We’ve done some of the witnessing work since the last new moon—and now we’re ready to begin transformation. (If you’re just joining in, you can go back to this article, and do a condensed version today.)

One very powerful practice for transmuting suffering and pain into something else—in this case, compassion and empathy—is the Tibetan Buddhist breath meditation practice of Tonglen.

Tonglen is Tibetan for “giving and taking” or “sending and receiving,” and the practice more specifically involves taking in suffering and giving out compassion.

Tonglen involves imaginatively inhaling the suffering of a particular group or the pain of a particular ailment or experience (this can be envisioned as dark smoke), transmuting it within yourself (with the warmth and power of your heart, for example) into golden light, joy, empathy, compassion—which you then exhale and send to those suffering the initial wound or pain.

If it sounds hard, triggering, or counterproductive to focus on a wound or suffering, these thoughts from Ringu Tulku Rinpoche may help:

“Both our fear and our desire are directly provoked by the tonglen meditation and it is an especially direct and effective way of dealing with aversion. We deliberately face all the things we dislike and dread. This takes courage. We imagine taking in and eliminating the hardship and pain that we have previously fought against and tried to run away from. The pleasures of wealth, power, and health that we wished for ourselves we now send to others. This totally counteracts our normal behavior and puts us on a collision course with the ego. Accepting and enduring negative things and daring to let them happen to us dispels both their harmful effects and our own anger and hatred. It makes adversity less frightening. We do not cause suffering or seek it out. We take up whatever suffering is around us, transforming it in the “giving and taking” exercise so that no one else will be injured by it and the negativity which already exists in the world is reduced. Thinking of our family and friends, the people we love—both alive and dead—our acquaintances, strangers, and even our enemies, we resolve to work on conquering all their misery and bad karma.”

And remember, if it ever is triggering, choose a different wound, a different type of suffering. Something less personal for you.

If it’s hard, but not triggering, breathing through it can be deeply healing, as can remembering the other people in the world suffering from the same pain, the same wound, and breathing it for them.

Here are the steps for the way I recommend doing tonglen for this particular occasion on this particular full moon, working with the wound we’ve already been holding. Please read through the instructions first, and then do the meditation (as feels safe and right for you).

Tonglen Breath Meditation

1. Recall the wound you brought up and “swaddled” during the new moon. If you can recall it, imagine bringing that wound back up into your vision and/or awareness, and holding it again. (There is no need to unwrap the wound, unless you feel particularly called to.)

2. With this wound present, set the intention to transmute this wound and pain, for yourself and for everyone who is afflicted by it.

3. Now imagine all the other people, all over the world, who also have experienced this wound, who also suffer (or have suffered) its pain.

4. On the inhale, imagine pulling in the pain and heaviness from all of those people—you might see this as a dark cloud of smoke, or another image (or other sensation) that captures this (sometimes I imagine something like green slime-sludge).

5. Hold the breath for a moment, and as you do, imagine the bright light and warmth and electricity of your heart transforming the black smoke or green sludge into a warm golden or white light (or again, fill in an image or sensation that feels right). If you don’t visualize much, you can work with sensation instead, allow yourself to feel warmth, joy, empathy for all these people the world over. (You can also adjust this, to think of one particular person who is suffering. It can sometimes be easier to feel empathy and love for someone you know and care about.)

6. On the out-breath, imagine this warm light and bright sensation pouring out of you and reaching out into the world, touching all the people afflicted by this wound (or the one specific person). Imagine them smiling, feeling joy and love, feeling pleasure in place of pain.

7. Continue this same process for 10 breath cycles. Note: You can breathe normally, and you don’t need to make the exchange on every single breath.

8. Repeat this meditation every day for the next fourteen days, until the next new moon.

The Dalai Lama has said of Tonglen meditation: “Whether this meditation really helps others or not, it gives me peace of mind. Then I can be more effective, and the benefit is immense.”

The importance is not so much in whether we are changing things on a collective level, but in what we can do on a personal level to do our own internal work, to be better able to do the work in the external world.

Thank you for being here, and for your practice.

Photo by Thomas Bjornstad on Unsplash