Total Eclipse (of My Heart)

Some things are indescribable.

I feel this way when I look into someone’s eyes, when I dare to hold my gaze for long enough to see the depths of the Universe that sit within all of us.

How do we understand this kind of infinity? Our Universe - as much as we can think and think and think about it - is the ultimate mystery. Because the more I learn about it, the less I know; it’s like each inquiry I make opens up a thousand more. Every step forward is a step into a greater unknown.

This can feel intimidating. I remember a few years ago I stepped out of the shower and suddenly became so aware of the vastness of the Universe that I had to put myself in front of the mirror and remind myself that I had a body. These moments still show up once in a while, like exclamation marks in eternity that punctuate my day-to-day physical existence here on Planet Earth. I choose to take them as signs of just how much more of me - how much more of us - there is to know and love. And when I feel the truth of this - that there is always room for more love - my heart overflows with wonder and amazement that I have a place to call home here in Our Universe.

I imagine you have had moments like this, too, times when it felt like the heavens opened and you saw this world in a precious new way. And sometimes, when we are really lucky, we get to share those kinds of moments with people we know. Sometimes we even get to share these moments with would-be strangers, people we have never seen before and will never see again, people we remain forever connected with through that singular shared experience.1

This week I had one of those moments. More specifically, this moment occurred in León, Spain at precisely 8:29 pm on Wednesday evening. I had come over to join a very special old friend and her family for the total solar eclipse, a group who just happened to have seen last year’s total solar eclipse back home in America. She told me about their adventure into totality over Christmas, that it had left such an awesome mark on her awareness that she would be booking a much bigger trip to see this summer’s total eclipse in Europe. That alone convinced me it was worth it, and I’m now sure there were no words she could have used to convey the totality of totality.

So now it’s my turn to share, and I promise to do my best to bring you there with me. I’ll do it through my very human story of how it came together, never mind the astrological significance and remarkable synchronicity that brought me to see a solar eclipse in the sign of Leo in a town whose name means « Lion. »

We spent Tuesday night enjoying the electricity in the air in a hot desert town that usually goes to sleep in August. The plazas were filled with spectators who had traveled far and wide, crunching their croquetas and clinking their cervezas. Wednesday morning we slept in and scouted viewing locations, eventually eschewing the European Space Agency’s impressive official platform by the train station for a buena vista up on the bluff above the city.

After a siesta snack and a quick pass around the centuries-old Gothic cathedral in the heart of the lion’s lair, we drove up to set up shop. We threw our blanket down on the exposed peak of the slope and cooled off in the surrounding pine forest, feeling the excitement rise both inside and all around us.2 (FN) Some people had been there all day, and a great many more poured in as the main event approached. They bore telescopes, folding chairs, picnic baskets, and all manner of anticipatory smiles.

We were all firmly in place by 7:30, ready to see the Moon take its first bite out of the Sun. And for a long time, even as we watched the shadow wash away all but a slim crescent of our local starlight, we couldn’t perceive even the slightest difference in the decidedly daytime atmosphere. It was, like the partial eclipses I have seen, an experience only observable through pinhole viewers or exceptionally dark glasses.

But by 8:20 it had started getting weird. A cool breeze blew up the hill, and the light took on a tone I have never before seen. It was like some kind of an alien dusk - eerie, ethereal and (mercifully) exceptionally flattering. This dusk only got more and more surreal by as each second passed, like a slow-playing scene from a sparsely-spoken throwback sci-fi film. Time seemed less and less relevant; all of nature - including us - felt tuned to the same station.

And then it happened. The Sun blinked out, the birds stopped singing, Mars emerged from behind the blue sky curtain, and the crowd went wild.

For those two minutes, we all sat and stared together marveling at a ring of yellow-white fire. There was no room for thinking about anything else; there was no space for questioning what was happening; we were just people on the Earth looking into the heart of our Solar System. And it was magic.

I wonder if this is how astronauts feel when they first look down on our planet from space, the tenderness and affection and LOVE they hold in their hearts for the Earth. The closest I can get to describing this feeling is to say that it would be like looking into the eyes of 8.3 billion people all at once. I cry without fail every time I bring it to mind, including right now. I am forever changed.

And as the light slowly came back to deliver an equally ethereal dawn, I found myself recommitting to make this planet a better place for everyone on it. Maybe I fell in love with astrology in the first place because I saw it as a way to connect us more deeply with our shared humanity. Almost certainly I fell in love with human rights because it does exactly this. So I’m not going to specific about how I bring my commitment to life, I’m going to offer it up and see where Our Universe takes me.

Now as I let go into what comes next - as we all let go into what comes next - I’m ready to do whatever I can for our collective home. I hope you are, too.

Happy Eclipse!

Love,

Patrick

PS: I’m away for the next two weeks, so we’ll come together for our next gathering in September. Thank you for your patience; I’ll share the deets with you next week.💕

PPS: This post goes out to the ever brilliant Bonnie Tyler, may she be dancing up there in the stars forever more.✨

Nurture and ground your sense of self in the fertile ground of your emotions. Make a deep commitment to consciously choose how you want to feel, and anchor those feeling states in the choices you make in every moment. If you want to feel radiant, what can you do to radiate? If you want to feel powerful, what can you do to express your agency? If you want to feel loving, what can you do to give more love to yourself and others?