The Death of Growth

Nature is constantly giving us moments to go dark: to retreat within ourselves, to investigate in silence, before we emerge as new beings.

Currently, the planet Venus is “under the beams” of the Sun. She just was infused with the Sun’s light in an exact conjunction, and will take her time to emerge from the glare of the Sun’s rays to a place of visibility.

Only a sliver of the moon is visible as we approach this week’s new moon in Leo.

Aside from the Sun, Venus and the Moon are our two brightest luminaries in the sky, guiding our way in the evening.

When they go dark, we feel it viscerally, because we lose their light in the sky.

New Beginnings and New Becomings

Planetary conjunctions of any kind signify new beginnings. This is especially the case when planets conjunct the Sun.

When planets enter the heart of the Sun, they get infused with life and energy.

Venus’ conjunction with the Sun marks a pivot point in her cycle. For the past nine months she has been an evening star, and will emerge from “under the beams” as a morning star.

She will become something different. She will play a new role in the solar system.

The moon receives its renewal from the Sun monthly, after which it grows bigger and brighter in the evening sky.

In our growth-oriented culture, this is the part we tend to focus on most: the infusion of energy, the process of growth.

But it’s not the whole story.

The Unmentioned Death of Things

Before a planet gets infused by the energy of the Sun, it goes dark. We stop seeing it in the sky. It loses its visibility. It loses its strength.

This process is anthropomorphized in the myth of Innana and Ereshkigal.

Innana and Ereshkigal represent two parts of the same whole.To become someone new, Innana must face her shadow side, the part of her that she has suppressed to the underworld.

As Innana goes down to the dark underworld, she is forced to shed her protective amulets, until she is stripped bare. She must die to be resurrected.

This is the process.

In nature, and in life, there is no gain without loss, no life without death.

The Fallacy of “Grow or Die”

This process is often simplified into a heuristic of grow or die. This has become one of those persistent clichés that gets repeated at a lot of personal development seminars and business conferences.

But it’s wrong. And it misses the point.

Growth and death are not a binary; they are one in the same.

The death is part of the growth. We already do both at once

Our physical bodies shed skin as they create new cells. Hairs fall out as new hairs grow. The body pumps blood and takes in nutrients as it eliminates the waste. We hardly need to think about this system — an elaborate and well-orchestrated process of continual growth and death.

All of nature operates this way: a continual cycle of simultaneous growth and death.

If we are to grow, to become something or someone new or different, we must let a piece of our selves die.

And here’s the thing: we don’t really have to “let” it happen, because it’s already happening without our conscious permission.

Our task is merely to recognize where and how it is happening, so that we can let go of what is dissolving with greater intention and awareness.