The DK Foundation

There is something intoxicating about new beginnings. To be committing to something, be it a decision or course of action is usually a good place in which to put oneself. It is to be in a place of possibility and, as yet, free from direct experiences of the difficulties and sacrifices involved in the realising of possibility. It is a place of creative freedom. The making of resolutions tends to give the comforting sense that we have control in our own lives and that we can make our lives different, more in line with the way we think they should be. Indeed our resolutions may be able to bring about significant change in our lives; that will depend on the degree of determination present and upon how well they are steered through the difficulties they encounter.

The start of new the Millennium will be for many of us a time for new beginnings and there is considerable collective power to be accessed by committing to new courses of action at this time -all the more so if we bind in the energy of Saturn and a new Moon - but the forces of resistance will still be lying in wait because they have been lying in wait since the Universe began, and we will experience their most serious challenges during the 3rd - 4th hour after commencing the course of action, and then again on the 3rd - 4th day; the 3rd - 4th week; the 3rd - 4th month and in what will prove to be the 3rd - 4th year if we can still remember when we began. These challenges will either deflect or defeat our intention or they will draw from us a renewed commitment and effort. There will be another such challenge on the 7th - 8th hour/day/week/month/year.

Everything in manifestation is subject to the Law of Vibration or the Law of Octaves which we readily recognise in the musical scale, if not in daily life. It will be either descending (creative) or ascending (evolutionary). The vibration from the original impulse whether that of God or man, proceeds uniformly for a while and then is subject to retardation before resuming a uniform rate once more. During retardation our plans undergo challenge. Retardation occurs at the mi - fa (3rd - 4 th) interval and again at the si-do (7th-8th) interval. It is the reason why there are no straight lines in Nature and why courses of action all so frequently produce the very reverse of their intended goal.

The phenomenon which is our solar system is on the descending octave. As constituents of organic life on earth we are the mi -fa interval in the solar octave. Of the kingdoms in nature the human kingdom is the only one which can significantly increase its transformative capacity because we are designed to evolve. Hence the importance of human development and the spiritual activity which induces it.

The consciousness of man is on the ascending octave and the Law of Vibration works through time and those units of time with which the human brain is cognizant.

One might say that the purpose of spiritual activity is to get human consciousness passed the mi - fa interval, to build the causal body which is the bridge between the soul and the personality, and then to function as a personality under the control of the soul. In doing this we increase the energetic output of the human kingdom and serve ourselves and our planet.

Any course of action to which we commit ourselves or any decision made becomes a manifested, evolving entity and therefore subject to the law of the ascending octave and subject to time.

We will encounter the retardation of vibration in all our plans and we always will because it is a fact of life in the worlds of manifestation.

Where plans and intentions are concerned, the retardation of vibration will manifest as loss of enthusiasm for the project, external resistance to the intention, or confusion about the purpose or the validity and value of the original plan. Retardation is one of the givens of any situation involving new beginnings. It challenges us to raise the stakes of our own intentions and to review and revise our own efforts and strategies. Consider the role of spiritual crises: they are a challenge delivered by the soul, a higher level, to the personality, the aim of which is to get the personality functioning with a higher level of awareness.

The best that we can offer in the way of a response to the process of retardation is, firstly, to acknowledge its existence. Whether we perceive it as coming from within ourselves or from the external world, we will meet resistance internal or external. Of that there is no question and so we may as well organise ourselves to meet it with the right kind of action. We help ourselves greatly if we involve other people who can remind us of our intention and give us the encouragement that we need at the time when the retardation of vibration is in evidence.

And, if necessary, we can always pick up and start again, the wiser for what we have learned about ourselves and what our plans require.

Awareness of the workings of the Law of Vibration should not remain a theoretical consideration. The workings of this law need to be recognised in our daily lives. It is easy enough to recognise when we know for what we are looking: it is omnipresent.

Where there is not preparedness then there is all too often confusion and disappointment. Spiritual thinking which focuses only upon the positive experience and upon attainment, usually of some advanced goal, does not prepare us to recognise and to deal with inevitable loss of momentum and changes of mood. In such circumstances, the appearance of challenge is frequently experienced as failure. Thus the place of new beginnings becomes the place of an all too familiar sense of powerlessness.

Goals do not lose their intrinsic value to us. What gets lost is our enthusiasm for making the effort and sacrifice required to sustain them. So we have to learn first to dissociate our plans and decisions from our fluctuating emotional reactions to them. We have to learn how to keep a show on the road and in the learning of this, it helps greatly to be aware and prepared for the retardation intervals.

What matters is not how many times we fail by our own standards. What matters is that we pick ourselves up and continue to work towards what we consider to be important. Failure is a perception, created by a certain time frame and a focus upon the destination at the expense of the journey. When we are focused on attainment we are too selective; we do not see what the struggle itself is achieving or what it is teaching us for future reference. This is true with reference to specific goals but also to our lives as a whole.

It is egotism that makes us make a big event out of our perceived failures. Breast-beating and despondency serve no useful purpose whatsoever. They simply dramatise the situation and waste time and energy.

Spirituality is about journeying. It involves taking wrong turnings, losing the way, falling and running out of steam. Spirituality also provides the reasons why we keep on struggling, the motivation to pick ourselves up and the means to learn from our mistakes. Spirituality is always about effort and only sometimes about a sense of achievement. Its concern is to provide the goals and the sense of purpose which keep us struggling against the forces of resistance in order to achieve something more than mere survival. Challenge is the warp, and the efforts of the human kingdom to meet this challenge are the weft of evolutionary achievement.

To evolve in his consciousness man, individually and collectively, has to go up the down staircase provided by nature. Nature does not need the mass of humanity to evolve beyond a certain point. Nature does not need us to bridge the mi - fa interval in consciousness because she has her own ways of getting what she needs from mankind and her means is death through epidemics, wars and mass destruction which exact from man the subtle substances she needs, and on the scale she needs them.

To evolve in consciousness and to become what we can be, all of us, individually and collectively, have to have goals and targets which provide us with criteria for discernment and consistency. Without a sense of purpose and without goals we become simply consumers, grabbing greedily and indiscriminately at whatever comes our way, changing our minds, losing faith and enthusiasm and turning round on the same spot until we sink exhausted and unfulfilled.

It is in struggling to arrange our time and energy in order to achieve what we consider to be important that we make a contribution. We process energy, we live more intelligently and we keep hope and therefore possibility alive. Spirituality is working with what we know and taking the responsibility to pick ourselves up and carrying on with what we still consider to be important after the forces of resistance have challenged us and knocked us off course and made us reconsider.

The greatest betrayal has to be to persuade ourselves that something is no longer important when we know that it is, and to side-step the challenge in order to avoid making an effort and to avoid the possibility of failing. That is to put out our own light and sabotage our own potential. That is probably the only real failure.

New Moons in 2000

All times and positions are given in UT. Add or subtract in accordance with the time zones to get local standard timings. (R.) denotes retrograde motion.

For the purposes of commencing new projects, a moon may be considered 'new' up to its first quarter, or seven days after the exact conjunction with the sun