Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good-fame,
Plans, credit and the Muse,—
Nothing refuse.
’T is a brave master;
Let it have scope:
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope:
High and more high
It dives into noon,
With wing unspent,
Untold intent:
But it is a god,
Knows its own path
And the outlets of the sky.
It was never for the mean;
It requireth courage stout.
Souls above doubt,
Valor unbending,
It will reward,—
They shall return
More than they were,
And ever ascending.
Leave all for love;
Yet, hear me, yet,
One word more thy heart behoved,
One pulse more of firm endeavor,—
Keep thee to-day,
To-morrow, forever,
Free as an Arab
Of thy beloved.
Cling with life to the maid;
But when the surprise,
First vague shadow of surmise
Flits across her bosom young,
Of a joy apart from thee,
Free be she, fancy-free;
Nor thou detain her vesture’s hem,
Nor the palest rose she flung
From her summer diadem.
Though thou loved her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,
Though her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive;
Heartily know,
When half-gods go,
The gods arrive.
I can now look back on past relationships and events and understand the evolutionary meaning in the words of this poem. The Gods as the ancients called the planets are the archetypes which are alive inside of us. Instead of thinking the planets are doing something to us which is a misrepresentation of the psychological discipline of Astrology, the planets describe who we potentially are as part of one unified organism that is unfolding — the Cosmos. This was first described as man, the microcosm is a miniature reflection of the greater macrocosm by Paracelsus, physician and alchemist (1493-1541).
None of us expresses all of the potentials in our birth chart and paradoxically it is all there as the blue print of our psyche from the first moment of birth. Knowing ourselves is both a life-long challenging responsibility and also ultimately a joyful experience.
The relationships that we attract into our lives, for better or worse become instrumental to our self-awareness and self-actualization — becoming whole — what Carl Jung called individuation.
This poem says give all to love — lovers, friends, family, our creativity, our resources, our purpose in life, a muse who inspires us, etc. All of this fully embraced will involve us in the experience of our own expressions of love. The word Eros means to create, to connect, to relate. Eros is the purest essence that we are each made up of — that mysterious connecting principle that we inherently are in our souls.
As the poem posits, it does take a courageous heart and complete trust in the flow of that inner master that knows more than we do to give ourselves to love. The poem suggests that our love is to be given freely without clinging or attachment. Love is truly liberating when we realize and truly accept that the love we get to feel for others is inside of us and is its own reward.
There is a song sung by Leann Rimes called, I Probably Wouldn’t be this Way. It goes, “Sometimes I feel that I’m so lucky to have had the chance to love this much. God gave me a moment’s grace ’cause if I’d never seen your face, I probably wouldn’t be this way.”
Carl Jung says,
“…man may even catch a fleeting glimpse of his wholeness, accompanied by the feeling of grace that always characterizes this experience.”
—Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, par 7
Even though we may through separation or death lose the people who evoke our love and whether they stay with us our entire lifetime or they go, we get to experience the transformative power of love. The beautiful and profound realization is that love is mysteriously moving us slowly and yet steadily toward an experience of our own wholeness.
After 25+ years of observation of my own experiences and those who have come to speak with me is that there is a synchronicity occurring all the time when we felt intense love. These experiences are not always completely pleasant as we are also encountering shadow contents through each other.
The Astrological transits (which is where the planets are at any given time and relative to our birth chart) and Alchemical processes which parallel these transits, will be making exact aspects to our natal charts in those time periods. There is cosmic timing of our self-knowledge which is built into our souls blue print. It comes about in the outer world through a “fascination” upon another human being who becomes extraordinary in our eyes.
“…the hidden state is one of latency and potentiality. The darkness and depths of the sea symbolize the unconscious state of an invisible content that is projected. Inasmuch as such a content belongs to the total personality and is only apparently severed from its context by projection, there is always an attraction between conscious mind and projected content. Generally it takes the form of a fascination.”
— Carl Jung, Psychology & Alchemy, par 336
Everything in the psyche is at first externalized in the mirrors of the “other” which often we can usually only see in retrospect. When we are caught up in the particulars and day-in and day-out interactions, it is hard to assimilate what is happening psychically and unconsciously between two people. Later, and time is of essence through careful reflection we will see a pattern. Situations will repeat in a spiral moving us closer and closer to consciousness if we are willing to see through ourselves.
Jung called this evolutionary spiral, circumambulation and astrologically it is the wheel of life as the planets are moving around the Sun and making aspects in our birth chart that symbolize our growth.
“He [the Alchemist] experienced his projection as a property of matter; but what he was in reality experiencing was his own unconscious. In this way he recapitulated the whole history of man’s knowledge of nature. As we all know, science began with the stars, and mankind discovered in them the dominants of the unconscious, the “gods,” as well as the curious psychological qualities of the zodiac: a complete projected theory of human character. Astrology is a primordial experience similar to alchemy.”
— Carl Jung, Psychology & Alchemy, par 346
Self realization was called the Opus/the great work.
Learning about our shadow, which is a part of our personal unconscious is a prerequisite for eventually discovering and having a relationship with the Anima (feminine in man) and Animus (the masculine in a woman). These archetypes/ soul images are not part of our ego so they are much more difficult to see as being inside us. We see them in you!
Because the latter cannot be seen directly, it is always projected; for, unlike the shadow, it does not belong to the ego but is collective. For this reason it is felt to be something alien to us, and we suspect it of belonging to the particular person with whom we have emotional ties. In addition a man’s unconscious has a feminine character; it hides in the feminine side of him which he naturally does not see in himself but in the woman who fascinates him. That is probably why the soul (anima) is feminine. If, therefore, man and woman are merged in some kind of unconscious identity, he will take over the traits of her animus and she the traits of his anima.
—Carl Jung, The Practice of Psychotherapy, par 469
When we are willing to do the inner work of asking ourselves what in us has been projected by either love (or hate), then we can recover our exteriorized psyche. This gives us our autonomy and the capacity to freely give ourselves as the poem describes, to love itself.
The spiritual reward is that as we each withdraw our projections, our ego/Self axis becomes accessible to us. Joy is the result as inner and outer take on a numinous quality that is experienced as holy and blissful. We now feel in awe of the synchronicities that come to us both symbolically in our dreams and in outer manifestation in matter making partnering with the transcendence (the Self) concrete and observable. The Gods (and Goddesses), the planetary archetypes within that were once projected have indeed arrived. The alchemists called this experience the treasure hard to attain. The alchemical Gold they said was not the common gold. It was psychologically the radiance of the SUN, synonymous with our open and loving hearts.
Rebeca Eigen
Rebeca Eigen, an astrologer for 25+ years and author of The Shadow Dance & the Astrological 7th House Workbook specializes in relationships. From every day decisions, to critical life-altering moments, Rebeca shares with you her practical wisdom and guidance for your life’s journey in becoming who you are meant to be.
https://www.shadowdance.com/
