Yesterday morning I awoke to even more silence than I’d been experiencing. For one thing, a thin coat of snow lay across the fields and all sound was muffled. Secondly, my internet connection was down. Because of where I live (no cell service), when the internet is out, so is my phone service and I have no connection with the outside world. The house seemed especially quiet knowing I couldn’t be reached and that I couldn’t reach anyone.
At first I wondered about people who might be trying to get in touch—had something urgent occurred? Then I thought about the News and wondered if a dramatic event had unfolded overnight that I didn’t know about. Then worry set in: what if I had no connection for several days? How would I feel to be so disconnected at a time when the only connection we have is through tiny little wires? I felt a bit like a puppet with my strings cut. It felt very strange: floppy and out-of-sorts. As though I had no bones to hold me up. No structure.
Structure is what keeps us strong, upright, grounded. Structure is what bones, skull, and teeth represent to our spirit. Structure is ruled by Saturn—the planet of bones and form. Saturn demands of us that we meet our responsibilities. Do what we have to do. Create an outline of our days, and stick to it. He reminds us that things get manifested by hard work. That we must create a skeleton of form in order to be free to develop our creativity and consciousness.
Is that always what Saturn teaches about structure, though?
During yesterday’s extreme quiet, I began to look at my structurelessness differently. I wandered the empty house. I picked up my guitar and sang. Reached for my drum and drummed. Wrote for a while, just for fun. Looked out the window again. Tried on some earrings and a ring that belonged to my grandmother. Thought of her. Went outside and looked at sparkles on snow. Heard a bird. Wondered a lot. And one thing I wondered was whether it was actually the other way around? That first we have structureless amorphous essence, and then comes a longing to experience ourselves! That we sang and drummed and danced this world into existence. That the vibrations became denser and denser until eventually bones were formed. That our longing for individuation and consciousness materialized into ethos and plasma and got increasingly firm and hardened into flesh and organs and blood with the air and earth and plenty of water. In other words, our skeleton—our structure—was formed from within our spirit. It was formed last. It was a structure on which to pin our spirit. An anchor with which to moor the amazing energy of our soul. It’s where we hang our spiritual hat, so to speak. It comes last, not first.
In in the complete silence I was steeped in yesterday morning I realized I had been looking at it backward. Instead of feeling unmoored, lost, I suddenly felt more deeply anchored in my structureless existence.