Sabian Symbols: A swimming race
A swimming race
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This universal idea is best expressed through planets in
Virgo 19 (18° - 19°)ROLE MODEL
The lower type competes with others while the more advanced beings compete with themselves towards mastery "Self-mastery by eliminating personal faults" The pursuit of excellence today is mostly associated with competition, yet the more advanced seeker tends to employ emulation as a more productive stirring-to-action. Swimming takes us to the water, here used as metaphor to describe our attempts to master the watery psychic realms. It must not be thought that only the gifted can access their deeper intuition. It is a natural human facility that we all can awaken and develop - and to do this we may find it beneficial to emulate a more realised person, one who has opened the ability to see into hidden areas.
Rudhyar: A SWIMMING RACE |
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A swimming race
Elimination
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Competition promotes the focus and excellence needed to grasp every opportunity
The treasure of individuality is the ultimate gift that this life offers. We are not the same as anyone else, although there are social processes of control and conditioning that seek to make us so. These grinding pressures need to be eliminated through the study and practice of personal excellence. A race supports this well but any intense personal challenge can also work. There is otherwise a real danger of inadequate self-dramatisation – by which we lose opportunities to grasp this treasure of uniqueness. On all levels the balance of life is found through instability. Survival itself, and certainly the pursuit of excellence and effectiveness, require us to recognise within ourselves the exact best response to the demands of every changing situation. We expand our skills, experience and understanding only when we are stretched. Each and every factor of being contributes to the whole organism’s highest state of operation – so each part needs to be frequently re-awakened, and tested, through the constant demands of movement. Only thus can we learn to appreciate how the overall best and harmonious outcome is a function of various components of self. Competition has long been practised as an activity that stimulates the individual to achieve their best. Typically we train, we take on new skills, and we develop the right mental and emotional attitude, so that we can do our very best against an opponent who is equally prepared. When skilful hunting was a survival question, competitions were less necessary. However, now when wars are frequent and fought without grace, socially controlled competitiveness is an effective channel for such energies. As a result of such self-training, we can become very pointed of focus. This clarity of inclination is powerful and certain to open up opportunities of further self-evolution and projection. The absence of such focus is the single most important reason for any disappointment and loss of direction. Any imperfection in our clarity of desire or precision of focus will render us subject to the whims and fancies of an external world that is callously indifferent to our wants and needs. Therefore divergence and dissipation occurs, through which we lose our sense of who we truly are. Whatever we may have been encouraged to believe, through pressures to conform, life is utterly impartial. No vision, no impulse, no ambition and no desire is rejected. Whatever we focus on clearly and unambiguously is attracted into our life circumstances whether or not approved of by the world – as long as we unreservedly approve of it (or in fact disapprove!) ourselves. |
