image: Wikimedia commons (link).
Happy Chinese New Year, a Lunar New Year, to all readers far and near!
Chinese New Year is determined using a lunisolar calendar, in which the actual date is determined by the New Moon, but anchored to the solar cycle.
This year, the 12-year cycle of the Chinese animal signs brings us to the twelfth sign of the cycle, the Year of the Pig.
The Pig is a propitious animal in Chinese culture, associated with Yin energy, compassion, and generosit
The Pig is also associated with wealth. Those who have taken the time to learn Chinese characters know that the symbol for the word which signifies family or household, pronounced jia in Mandarin and gaa in Cantonese, is a symbol representing a pig underneath a roof:
While dogmatic advocates of the ideology of materialism typically resist any suggestion that the heavenly cycles (including the annual cycle related to the earth's relationship to the sun and the changing background of stars "behind the sun" as we travel through our orbit each year, as well as certain longer cycles including the background of stars through which the faraway planet Jupiter will move as it goes through its roughly twelve-year orbit around the sun) could have an impact on our feelings, behavior, or situation here on earth, the nearly universal belief exhibited by ancient cultures around the world that the changing positions of our planet relative to the other planets and the sun and moon can have an impact on events in our lives suggests something beyond mere "superstition" or "pre-scientific groping for explanations" about our natural world.
Indeed, as pointed out in the preceding post, the fact that our subconscious mind can sense and perceive information which is overlooked, ignored, or even actively filtered out by our conscious mind (which has its own agenda, including defending its own self-constructed "identity" and world-views or paradigms which it has built up or borrowed or adapted in its attempts to make sense of the world in which it finds itself) is beyond dispute.
Often, our subconscious will provide us with answers, insights, or intuition which does not come from the efforts of our conscious mind. For instance, pioneering chemist August Kekule (1829 - 1896) reported that one day while pondering the problem of the chemical structure of the hydrocarbon benzene, he slipped into a kind of reverie or daydream state in which he saw a snake grasping its own tail in his mouth -- and upon waking realized that this vision provided him with the solution to the problem (the benzene molecule consisting of a hexagonal ring of six carbon atoms and six hydrogen atoms).
Whether or not Kekule was just making up an anecdote or actually slipped into a dream state and saw the serpent he described, these "answers from the land of dreams" are actually a fairly widespread phenomenon which many readers will recognize as having occurred at some point in their own life, as discussed in this previous post. More than once, I myself have had similar revelations in which an answer is present after waking up to a problem I was thinking about the night before. These insights and answers cannot be said to have come from the conscious mind, since the conscious mind is "unconscious" when we sleep, although the subconscious continues to operate.
Indeed, the subconscious mind is so sensitive, powerful, unfettered, and wide-ranging that in some cases it seems to perceive or tap into sources of information that "should not" be available to it, if its only source of input comes from the five physical senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and scent. The subconscious mind at times appears to be able to gather information available "at a distance," or even perhaps available to the subconscious mind of other men and women. In some cases, it is possible to argue that the subconscious mind at times appears to be sensitive to information that comes from the Invisible Realm itself.
Given this understanding, it is not unreasonable to consider the possibility that the subconscious can and does gather information regarding the impact of phenomena, motions, and alignments far beyond those perceived by the conscious mind, or even considered possible to detect by the conscious mind -- to include the arrangements of the planets or the relative positions of the earth and the moon or the earth and the sun.
If our subconscious receives information, feelings, sensations and vibrations from our surroundings including the height of the ceiling or the arrangement of the furniture or the shape of the room in which we are standing or sitting or working at any given moment (and I would argue that our subconscious most certainly does receive and absorb such information), then it is certainly possible that even more distant arrangements, including the various geometries and gravitational tugs created by the relative positions of sun, moon and planets, could perhaps be registered in our subconscious, regardless of the fact that our conscious minds tell us that such a thing is completely impossible.
Presently, from our perspective in the inner solar system, the mighty planet Jupiter is positioned such that it is located "in" the constellation of Scorpio (in other words, the stars that we see as the constellation Scorpio form the "background" or "backdrop" for the planet Jupiter when seen from our perspective). Last year at this same time, the planet Jupiter was in the preceding zodiac constellation, of Libra, and next year at this time Jupiter will have moved along its roughly twelve-year orbit to a position "in" the constellation of Sagittarius (which follows Scorpio in the zodiac).
Is it not possible that the position of this enormous planet, as well as the positions of the other large bodies in our solar system (to include the central sun, as well as our nearby moon, and the other planets on their orbits) might create subtle changes in the environment around us which our subconscious can read and absorb, even as our conscious mind remains blissfully unaware of such changes (and even as most of the constructs we create as part of our identity as a "modern man or woman" exclude without any hesitation the very possibility of such perception, let alone the possibility that these changes could impact the way we feel or behave)?
This question is all the more intriguing in light of theories put forward over the course of the past century or two which suggest that the actual orbits of the planets themselves might be responding to influences from other dimensions beyond the three dimensions which we normally acknowledge (but which may not be the only dimensions that exist, at all). For more on that subject, see this previous post entitled "The gods are real."
As that post suggests, it is very possible that there are certain actors on the world stage who are very much aware of the sensitivity and power of our subconscious (and its possible ability to make connections that even go as far as other dimensions and other realms), and who may be incorporating such alignments into their own plans.
However, the ancient wisdom available in the world's myths indicate such power can (and indeed should) be used for beneficial purposes, in order use our own gifts as effectively as possible, for our own benefit and for the benefit of others (see for example this previous post).
As we reach the point of another Lunar New Year and Chinese New Year, these are very important subjects to consider. It is certainly a part of the year which is taken very seriously in a large part of the world -- a time for giving respect and reverence to the gods, and to one's own ancestors who made our own existence possible.
At this start of a new Lunar New Year, I am grateful to all who interact with the ideas I share in this blog and in my books and videos, and wish all of you a very Happy New Year and a propitious Year of the Pig!