The Libra Phase Of Seven Year Cycle
Libra is the seventh phase of the seven year and it’s archetype is The Scales. The Scales symbolize reestablishing the balance between self and others and one’s environment, and facing the karma of too much ‘me-ness’ and not enough ‘otherness’.
The Libra Phase is the first phase in the 6 phase process of reintegration of the individual with the larger environment, after the process of defining a new individuated existence has been completed during the previous phases of the seven year cycle.
In the Libra Phase, one is confronted with crisis with that larger environment. It may be in any form, yet it often comes in the form of a demand to respond to a circumstance of life that is disillusioning and can be overwhelming. It is a confrontation with the ideal of life that one was ‘counting on’ or at least hoping for, and it provides the basis for a struggle with disillusionment, for a need to ‘rebalance’ the scales of one’s sense of harmony with the environment.
The confrontation can come in many forms, a divorce, a health crisis, whatever. Yet it is always a confrontation with those ideals of ‘harmonious life’ that one has held onto rather idealistically or hopefully. In looking closely at the process of the phase one can discern the roots of these confrontations in one’s actions previous to this phase, actions that may have been more egocentrically based and thus ‘required’ a balancing. The world one confronts in the Libra Phase is thus a ‘fallen’ world, a world that does not fit the visions of harmony, cooperation, support, mutual love that one longs for. A world that is ‘out of balance’. The circumstances of this world demand one respond, and one struggles to attain a balance that seems out of reach.
This phase is the struggle with the demands made upon you by the environment in which you exist. This environment is in essence ‘the great otherness’ and can manifest as a struggle in your relations with others, as well as with any ‘other’, such as even your own body as in the case of illness. The phase entails working out a balance with the otherness in your world. But it can also manifest as a struggle with circumstances that arise in your life that make great demands upon you.
These circumstances can be illness, legal issues, or struggle with demands being made by others in your social environment. This archetype is also associated with balance and justice and is related to balancing your desires against the consequences of fulfilling those desires. This phase is a phase in which ill considered choices made in the past that disregarded potential consequences can come home to roost. You may find yourself having to deal with the consequences of those choices socially or personally or even physically.
This period can be a kind of payback time for excesses in your behavior and actions, a time when you are faced with the consequences of your actions that were not balanced with nature, others, or social existence. So this phase has this larger ‘environment’ confronting you dramatically with demands that must be dealt with (The archetypal Libra is blind justice holding the scales). It is the struggle with your responsiveness to others, with partnering arrangements, with social intimacies and social cooperation.
You will often find yourself in conflict with the ‘environment’ in which you exist. Remember that this environment is any otherness, possibly including your own body. You may seem to place yourself in the line of fire relative to others confrontation of you by your need to “balance” your relationship with them. The struggle is thus with the attempt to balance your cooperative relationships. Demands upon you may appear to be great. During this phase you seem to be resistant to others, and to the demands of ‘any other’ and to their apparent imposition upon you in various perceived ways.
Last updated on July 6, 2014 at 10:07 pm. Word Count: 652