Entering a new phase

It is said that a big astrological event happened on Feb 4th this year, i.e. Neptune entered into Pisces.  I don’t know much about astrology unfortunately, but my understanding is that for the next 14 years, themes such as spirituality, dreams, healing of soul, art, religious feeling, etc. will be coming more and more to the foreground in our awareness.
Many of you may have already noticed this tendency in the past few years. My feeling is that we will see an increasing number of business organizations, individuals and groups that feature all kinds of ‘spiritual stuff’ of both good and poor qualities so that each of us need much discernment in order to sift through them.

One of my teachers, whom I regard as practicing ‘well-grounded spirituality’ said the other day something that left me with an impression. According to him, we are in a phase where we have to wrestle with all the seemingly negative things in ourselves, tasks we haven’t completed, emotions, our shadow parts, etc.; that going through such process may feel heavy and make us feel as though we’ve gone backwards on our spiritual paths. However, actually, working on such things as well as dealing with everyday tasks such as cleaning and cooking, ARE in fact spiritual. The last part actually reminded me of zen teaching that includes everyday chores as integral parts of its spiritual practice.

Speaking of shadow parts, for the past week, so many people around me have been telling me about nightmares and nightmarish experiences they’d had (actually almost on the same day) and wanted to know what they might mean. For almost all of them, one of the background messages of such dreams and experiences seemed to be ‘to get in touch with the power behind what they regard as something negative and scary, and to use it wisely.’ As we enter this new phase, you may find the messages and information that we need for our personal and spiritual growth are knocking on our doors louder than ever before through dreams, synchronicities and daily encounters. We are often afraid of what may be standing behind the door, but you may be in for a pleasant surprise when you actually open it.