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A FREE
Ezine from Yoga Technology
ASTROLOGY
* SPIRITUALITY * MEDITATION
* KUNDALINI YOGA
Published in English and Spanish
Editor: Gururattan K. Khalsa, Ph.D.
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Issue
02
THE
PERFECTION OF VIRGO:
Inner
and Outer Alignment
Contents
Inner
and Outer Alignment
Virgo's
Perfectionism
Outer
Alignment
Inner
Alignment
Pranayama
and Mantras
Outer
Alignment - Clean Your Closet
Virgo
Alignment Meditation Exercises
The
Gift of Virgo

The
Perfection of Virgo:
Inner
and Outer Alignment
by Gururattan
K. Khalsa, Ph.D.
August 23,
1999
The
Sun entered the sign of Virgo Monday August 23 and will be in
this part of the zodiac through September 22. While the Sun is
in a particular sign, we feel the effects of its energy. We are
lead to work on the lessons it has to teach us. We are supported
with the powers and insights that it has to offer. It is beneficial
to consciously orient our attention to the gifts that it is bringing
us during this 30-31 day period.
This
is also true while the Moon is in a particular sign. And intensely
true when both the Sun and the Moon are in the same sign. While
the Sun is in Virgo, the moon will also be in Virgo September
8 from 7:57am(PST-Pacific Standard Time) till 2:16pm (PST) September
10. During that time there is a New Moon in Virgo September 9
at 2:03pm (PST) The New Moon is the best time to set goals for
that sign for the coming year. We have two and a half weeks while
the Sun is in Virgo to figure out what these goals are.
Each
sign of the Zodiac offers us a special way of being. Each sign
is a different aspect of the unfoldment of a complete human being.
As we move through the Zodiac cultivating the attributes of each
cycle of growth and development, we experience more and more wholeness.
When the Sun is in a particular sign, it is an opportune time
to discover and explore its unique qualities. When the Sun is
shining through Virgo, it is a propitious time to incorporate
the practical, meticulous, analytical and discriminating qualities
of this Earth sign into our being.
Each
sign of the Zodiac is associated with (or ruled by) a Planet.
Traditionally Virgo is ruled by Mercury, which explains its discriminating
intellect and ability to analyze details. Some astrologers also
associate Virgo with the asteroid Chiron which orbits between
Saturn and Uranus. I feel that Chiron helps complete our understanding
of Virgo. Chiron is the wounded-healer. Virgo energy is concerned
with health and healing. Many great healers are Virgo's. When
Chiron gets in touch with its own wounds and heals itself, it
is able to offer its healing gifts to the world.
Chiron
bridges the personal planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and
Saturn) with the impersonal planets (Uranus, Neptune and Pluto).
Virgo energy plays a pivotal role in transitioning to the Aquarian
Age because it perceives the Truth with its powerful mind and
holds the pole on Earth to manifest it.
Chiron
is symbolically the bridge between the inner and outer aspects
of our psyche. The bridge is crossed through our personal healing
journey which includes the care of our body through appropriate
exercise and nutrition and care of our Soul through the recognition
of our own gifts and perfection. Virgo energy feels compelled
to express itself through work and service. What greater healing
than to work hard offering our gifts to the world!

Virgo's
Perfectionism
Each
sign has its "bad reputation." People with their sun
sign in Virgo have the reputation of being knit-picky, fastidious,
perfectionists, obsessed with details and often workaholics and
worriers. I have had Virgo's themselves tell me, "My need
to analyze everything drives me crazy." I have also heard
disorganized non-Virgo's wish for "more Virgo energy."
Two days after the Sun went into Virgo. I personally found myself
compelled during my morning yoga to get up and organize something
in my room. One friend, with prominent, but not Sun, Virgo energy,
told me that someone who interpreted speech patterns said that
his need for order and cleanliness in his life, meant that physical
order brought him closer to the Divine.
Before
we make too many generalizations, it is important to point out
that we each have every sign of the zodiac in our natal chart.
If our Moon, Ascendant or Rising Sign (where the Sun appeared
in the sky when we were born) or any of the other planets are
in Virgo, we too incorporate Virgo energy into our psyche and
need to align with its highest expression to find peace and wholeness.
If we have none of the above in Virgo, it is still there in some
House (area of life) of our natal chart willing, but perhaps not
demanding us, to use its energy and its gifts.
One
of Virgo's challenges is to accept, not complain about or get
upset by, mistakes and imperfections. For Virgo's this requires
a reframe of the concept of perfection. The goal of Virgo's commanding
desire for perfection, is to actually experience the reality of
perfection in the universe and in one's Self. And most fortunately
for all of us, the universe is a perfect place. Our human quest
is to align ourselves with this perfection.
Perfect
does not mean that everything is the way we want it to be. Perfect
means everything is the way it is! Perfect does not mean that
everything is goody-goody and all "bad or evil" has
been eliminated. Perfect means that the law of cause and effect
is calibrated precisely for everyone and everything, every where.
What we put out, we get back. What we project, we attract. And
we are all One in this cosmic dance. All our stories, conversations,
wishes, dreams, curses, fears, tantrums interact with each other
and fit together like a cosmic jigsaw puzzle.
Free
will gives us the choice of how we want to interact. We get to
make our own decisions about what we want to contribute to the
cosmic soup. And the taste of the soup depends upon what we offer
to the pot. If the majority of us offer fear and anger, we get
wars and environmental destruction. If a critical mass of us offers
service and love, we get peace and joy. And everyone of us is
doing exactly what we have to do that this time and place to learn,
grow and elevate ourselves to place where we consciously perceive
and live by this law.
This
perfect alignment of cause and effect sooner of later leads us
to observe some basic facts of life including the following. There
is a constant interaction and co-creation taking place between
our inner and outer realities. Each one influences the other.
One of the main challenges of life is to maintain an equilibrium
between the two and to align both our inner psyche and our outer
environment so that they positively impact and support each other.
Our
goal is to align our inner and outer environments with the cosmic
flow and with the perfected energy of our Soul. The process of
attaining this goal includes everything from the very mundane
to the spiritually exalted. As we make progress at both ends of
the spectrum, we realize that they are not only mutually supportive,
they are perhaps the very same thing, just different manifestations
of the Divine. Let's explore how we achieve both outer and inner
alignment.

Outer
Alignment
How
can our outer environments help us reach personal and cosmic alignment?
If it is true that everything is interconnected, and we are assuming
this is true, the more our outer environments are in order, they
more they will support our inner order. And the more we desire
inner order, the more we will be motivated to put our physical
plane into order.
Years
ago someone told me about one of the follow-up courses to the
est Training, which used outer alignment to create personal alignment.
I don't remember the name of the course but I will call it the
Clean Your Closet Course. (CYC Course for short) The first class
consisted of one assignment-put order into your life. Clean and
organize your closets and drawers, get rid of what you do not
use or want, pay your bills, clean up your debts. And do whatever
else you can think of to clean up your scene-wash your car, feng
shui your house (this was not included but it is a good idea),
sew the rips in your clothes. The list could go on. The participants
had 3 months "to get their external worlds together".
Virgo's
must have loved this course! I bet they felt very validated! Imagine
the enthusiasm and the reverence, that they must have brought
to the whole process. Not to mention the joy they must have felt
when the perfection they sought in mundane cleanliness and order
started to produce magical results.
As
Virgo's and non-Virgo's alike organized their lives, amazing things
started to happen-new jobs, new relationships, new opportunities-all
of which were not planned or sought out. In sum, the external
cleansing created the space for new events and possibilities to
manifest.
It
has been over twenty years since I heard about the CYC Course
and I have "enrolled" myself in my own version of it
many times. Whenever I feel stuck or things aren't happening fast
enough for me, I either take a full on course or at least a refresher
until the energy opens up and things start to move forward to
my satisfaction. Actually organization is an on-going process
in my life.
As
we know, there is a constant interaction between our inner and
outer environments. Inner order through yoga and meditation and
other spiritual practices creates the desire and space for outer
order. Outer order creates a stable environment in which to pursue
inner order. That is why we have churches, meditation rooms, dojo's-places
consecrated to a particular spiritual activity where the energy
and the intention support our journey. The point is that whether
you are just beginning or continuing your yoga and meditation
practice, your progress will be greatly enhanced by planning your
own CYC Course. Begin wherever you feel most appropriate for you,
but be sure to include cleaning up your living space and creating
a special place to do yoga and meditation.
As
a culture we are very externally oriented. One of our biggest
life challenges is to be able to actually focus on our own thoughts
and energy. Our thoughts and energy do create our inner and outer
realities, so if we want to consciously participate in what we
create, we have to be able to connect and interact with our own
psyche and vibration. The question is HOW do we turn our sensors
to ourselves? How can we get our own attention?
The
outer part of the answer is that we have to organize our lives
enough so we can relax and focus on ourselves. If our external
life is chaotic, it will command our attention. We will, by necessity,
be trying to figure out what to do next, how to establish safety
or how to get our needs met. Or the chaos may simply provide so
much stimulation that we are drawn towards it and away from ourselves.
If we are distracted, preoccupied or upset, the prevailing circumstances
will demand our attention and use our energy. It takes a harmonious,
non-disruptive environment to be able to focus on ourselves. It
takes a supportive environment to be able to pull our attention
into ourselves.

My
Experience
I
am in fact writing this article because I recently had this experience
in my morning meditation. Over the past few weeks I have organized
many things in my personal life including, fixing my car, buying
a new bed, defragging and increasing the rams on my computer,
organizing my closet, purchasing a file cabinet and filing and
marking all my papers, etc. The day before I washed my car, vacuumed
and dusted the house, washed clothes, completed many things on
my to-do list, cleaned out and filed more e-mails from my inbox.
During
my meditation I experienced that I could actually focus on my
own energy in a more powerful way than before and that this was
a result of the satisfaction that I felt from the level of organization
that I was achieving. I realized that if I simply aligned my own
energy in a very peaceful way that I could attract to me the wool
rug I want for my office/bedroom. Totally in keeping with Virgo
energy, I want something very practical, yet beautiful, that will
unify the energy in my room. I set my intention, and in fact wrote
it down, and then did my morning meditations in a way that I was
really present to their power and sweetness.
For
the record, less than a minute after completing my morning practice,
someone called me who wanted to place an order for my yoga manuals
in a few weeks. (I stated in goal that I wanted results by the
end of August which is in 1 1/2 weeks.) I am going to keep track
of the results this time. In any case, I took this call as confirmation
from the universe.

Inner
Alignment
There
are many levels of self-awareness. Our major awareness is about
the appearance of our body. But we want to cultivate more subtle
energetic awareness where we can feel and be present to the energy
in and around our body. Then we can begin to distinguish between
different energies, e.g. between emotions, levels of comfort,
and the energies of each of our chakras.
The
above is important because it is at these finer levels of energy
that we can influence how we co-create our reality. To change
our reality, we have to change our energy. There are two basic
ways to do so.
First,
we can change our reality simply by creating alignment within
ourselves. To do so we have to be able to bring our attention
to ourselves and our own energy. In this chaotic world of over
stimulation and manipulation and control, focusing on ourselves
is a very challenging task. That is why we discussed the importance
of creating order in the areas of our external world that we have
control over. Alignment in our environment facilitates self-focus,
which is a prerequisite for inner alignment. In turn our inner
alignment creates changes in our outer environment. And to complete
the interaction, the more we consolidate our own energy, the more
we want order around ourselves and are motivated to take the necessary
action to achieve it. Inner organization stimulates the need and
desire to create organization in all aspects of one's life.
Outer
and inner alignment can be related respectively to the tasks of
scandisk and defrag of one's computer. To keep our computer functioning
we have to perform these two operations on a regular basis. Scanning
the disc or the hard drive, locates and puts back into place major
areas that have been displaced or mis-aligned. Defragmentation
goes deeper into the files "cells" and reorganizes them
by getting rid of wasted space and putting everything back in
an orderly fashion. It is fun to watch the screen while this process
is going on. Visually you can see the screen with thousands of
tiny squares being reorganized. The same principles apply to our
own lives.
To
align ourselves with our environment and with the universe, we
have to smooth out our own edges. We have to "scan"
what isn't working for us or needs cleaning up and do what needs
to be done to bring us back on track. We also have to make peace
within ourselves. To cultivate a peaceful inner space and a balanced
emotional state, we have to "defragment" ourselves,
make peace with all aspects of our being and connect with our
center where we experience our own oneness. When we do so, we
experience our presence as both calm and vital.
When
our energy is coherent and harmonious, it aligns with universal
energies. It is this alignment that attracts things to us with
little or no effort. It is this alignment that makes it possible
to set goals and watch circumstances in our life unfold to bring
them into manifestation. Intention, setting goals and prayer are
the second way we participate in co-creation. We get specific
about what we want. We direct our energy to achieve certain results.
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