How a Lunar Eclipse Ignites Cosmic Connection

Like many other people, I awoke early on the last day of January 2018 to watch the full lunar eclipse of the Super Blue Moon. The second full moon within the same month is known as a “Blue Moon.”

The full lunar eclipse occurs when both the moon and earth align with the sun and the earth casts its shadow across the face of the moon.

During this eclipse, the moon was orbiting closest to the earth so it appeared larger and brighter than usual. We call this a Super Moon.

Venturing outside at 4am, I saw the curved shadow of the earth shading the top edge of the moon. Sitting on the picnic table in the still darkness, I watched while the earth totally eclipsed the moon by 5:30am. While driving to work half an hour later, my last glimpse of the eclipse showed an ellipse of light just glinting at the top edge of the moon as La Luna began to emerge from the shadow.

At work that day I had the best day ever. Everything was going my way as Santana would say.

I was so happy all day long. Upon returning home to my front yard, the picnic table where I sat witnessing the eclipse seemed different.

It was shimmering in a numinous halo of blood-blue-super moon, total eclipse energy. We did half-moon pose in our evening yoga class to commemorate the magical morning.

A few days later, while processing the experience, I remembered physicist cosmologist Brian Swimme’s notion that we humans are the culmination of a billion year process of the evolving universe. In his book, The Universe is a Green Dragon Swimme forges a cosmology where humans are “a space, an opening, where the universe celebrates its existence.”

Swimme knows when he looks at the night sky, that his feelings of awe and wonder for the majesty of life does not rise alone in his being, but are rather the feelings of the universe reflecting upon its own grandeur. He describes the universe as this single energetic event, that is a unified but multiform outpouring of being. We humans embody all the cosmological powers of the universe, such as gravity which we manifest as attraction and love. We are connected to everything.

“To live,” he reminds us, “is to enter this beauty, surrounded by enchantment, summoned by magnificence.” Great minds think alike and another principled scientist, from a different discipline, confirms Swimme’s hypothesis.

Biologist E.O Wilson coined the term, “biophilia,” to describe our affinity with life, or as he clarifies, “the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes.” Wilson argues that the freedom we humans seek is inextricably linked to the green places of the planet. He exhorts us to “explore and affiliate with life as our existence depends on this propensity, our spirit is woven from it, hope rises on its currents.”

While describing how the eclipse had affected me to a nurse friend, she reminded me that the moon was closest to the earth during this event. She remembered that when she worked at the hospital they had to staff extra people in the OB clinic during a super full moon since more babies were born during these times. The moon pulls the earth’s waters and we humans are composed of water too. A baby’s first environment is amniotic fluid, the watery ocean within the uterine placenta where a baby develops while in the womb.

If I didn’t think I was connected to the whole thing by then I was certainly more convinced now. While discussing this transformative phenomena with Dr. John Galaska, my neurofeedback practitioner in Ojai, he suggested that just like a single bad event can create a lasting change in someone, so too can a single good event, which seems to be what has happened to me.

Hindus use the term “darshan” when referring to what we might call “view.” This could imply a particular philosophical perspective, but is also popularly considered as a blessing, such as when the mountain looks over the valley, bestowing darshan. Eyes painted on temple roofs are meant to convey the darshan of the temple’s resident deity. This must be why I can meditate outside so much easier than indoors. I am really present in the now with no monkey mind. The darshan is flowing between me and the universe.

When I learned that yoga postures may have arisen millennia ago as a metamorphic embrace of the habitat, it changed everything for me. In honor of the recent heavenly spectacle, instead of practicing the series of postures called “suryanamaskar,” (sun salutation), I’ll be reviving a lesser-known practice: “salute to the moon.”

Nancy Lynn Ivey, MA holds graduate degrees in religion and is a freelance journalist focused on holistic health, wellness and spirituality. She teaches yoga at California State University, Bakersfield and at her studio Yogaya in the mountains above the Kern River Valley in Central California’s Kern County. As a member of the couchsurfing community she hosts travelers and pilgrims on the path and is building a gesodesic dome to house a retreat center in the beautiful fountain of youth river valley where she teaches and lives. As an Upledger certified craniosacral therapist and certified vegan chef she shares therapeutic protocols both local and online through food, newsletters, articles, classes, bodywork sessions, sound therapy, art, and theater where she invites the greater community to recharge their incarnational vehicle. To read more about her work visit her websites at http://www.nancyivey.com or http://www.ramblingnan.com.

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