The Lion Within: Finding Harmony in the Month of Leo
Hi everyone, Simon Jacobson here, welcome to another episode of Meaningful Life! This is part of our zodiac series, “What the Stars Say About You: Leo.” We’re now in the month of Leo, and this program is dedicated by Martha Real in honor of humility. Let’s hope everybody’s been well.
We began this series around five or six months ago, and we’re covering, once a month, the sign of that month. Now we are in, uh, as I said, Leo, which follows the previous, Cancer. All these programs can be seen on our YouTube channel as well as our other platforms, so check it out and, and I hope this will be meaningful.
So as we’ve discussed many times, the signs are essentially predispositions. Think of them as archetypes. Just as different people are born with different personality types, each of us is born with certain predispositions. So Leo, which of course is the word for lion, in Hebrew, it’s aryeh – that’s the Hebrew word for lion. A lion immediately evokes certain reactions. We all think of a lion, powerful, awesome, certain regality. Even the lion is referred to often as the king, the king. And we’ve all seen The Wizard of Oz, the king – perhaps lacking courage – but still a king. The Talmud does tell us that the mal, the, the lion is the king of the, in the animal kingdom. And then of course, the roar of the lion, that roar. I don’t know if you know this but lions are from the few animals that actually roar together. Many animals roar individually.
So what does the lion represent in terms of spirit, soul, energy, personality type?
The Lion that Destroys and the Lion that Rebuilds
I’d like to begin by quoting a very interesting uh, statement from the ancient sages. This is called Midrash, a midrash, and it talks about this period in time. It says the following, loosely translated: that in the month of Leo, a lion will come and destroy a lion. So, in the month of the lion, a lion will destroy a lion, unconditioned, that a lion and that in the month of lion, a lion will come and rebuild the lion.
What is it talking about, this cryptic statement?
The lion is referred, the time of the lions referred to, this period in the year, this month of Leo. The lion that destroys, is referring to Nebuchadnezzar, the lion of Babylon, the king of Babylon. And what did he destroy? Destroyed the Holy Temple, which is referred to as a lion. On condition that in the same very month of the lion, a lion will come, and who is the lion refers to now, God. We say God, the roar of the lion, is the awesome power of the Divine rebuilding, that will rebuild the lion, the Holy Temple.
Now, what is the meaning of this statement? And what was the condition?
The Temple Within: Bridging Heaven and Earth
Well, let’s define what a temple is. The sanctuary is essentially, using modern lingo, is an interface between Heaven and Earth, between the transcendent and the mundane, between the Divine and the diabolical, a bridge, a bridge. We clearly live in a very material world, but we also have a spirit, a soul. The question is, can these two meet or do we need to compartmentalize?
So, Albert Einstein put it, E=MC², that energy and matter are really reversible, and actually two, both are energy. But on a deeper level, the same concept is that spirituality, spiritual energy, and material energy are just two forms of energy. And they indeed are not just, they commit but they’re really two of the same. So the concept of integrating our transcendent lives and our lives of survival are actually discovering that deeper unity that connects everything. And that’s what the lion represents.
As far as the temple goes, a place, a meeting place, where two forces come together, tremendous power, material power. But when harnessed properly, generates tremendous spiritual power. That’s what a lion represents.
Who Are You? Living from the Inside Out
So in the month of the lion, there was a lion that came and used that power to destroy. Used that power out of ego and arrogance of self-worship to destroy the lion, that bridge between Heaven and Earth, between spirit and matter. But it’s unconditioned. It’s on conditioned because the real purpose of it all is that every destruction builds some, brings something that’s even greater than what was there before. Like every challenge, every illness, brings a recovery that makes you stronger than you were before the illness in the first place.
So the condition is that the very same month of the lion, a lion will come and rebuild this connection.
So in psychological terms, what this means is for us to be healthy people, we need to have a certain seamlessness. A seamlessness between what you do and who you are. I asked a person, “Who are you?” They give me their business card. I say, “That’s not who you are, that’s what you do.” So some people giggle, some people just give you a blank stare and some say, “Oh, what should I tell you? I’ve been doing this for so long, what I do has become who I am.” And some will even sigh and say, “I know it sounds crazy. It’s like the ship tells the captain where to go or the captain is done the ship, ready to go.”
Who you are should dictate what you do, not what you do should dictate who you are. But we often live from the outside in rather than from the inside out. So, we respond to expectations, to demands, to pressures to deadlines, bills have to be paid. But we’re not physical beings on a spiritual journey, we’re spiritual beings on a physical journey. So it’s from your spirit, your soul, your very purpose in life and mission should be driving everything else. That’s the bridge. That’s when body and soul are in harmony. That’s when there’s an inner peace, where you’re not being driven by disjointed fragments, but rather, things are coming from a hub and then expressed through the spokes, rather than the spokes dictating the hub.
So it’s important to ask ourselves that question: Who am I? What drives my life? What’s my mission statement? And you’re able to answer that and then say, from the mission, I then express it through my different activities, my different thoughts, speech, actions, the different involvements I have. Then you have yourself an integrated life. That’s the ultimate lion.
Harnessing the Lion Within
And then you can take your material successes and the power and harness it, channel it, and direct it toward fulfilling the very purpose of existence. However, when there’s a dissonance, when there’s a severing between the two, that’s when all the issues come up, when people talk about feeling anxious, feeling out of place, feeling not aligned properly. You’re talking about something that there is not harmony.
Think about health. What is a healthy body? What does it feel like to be healthy? If you have any answer to that question, what it feels like, that’s really a bad sign! Health shouldn’t feel like anything. It’s seamless. There’s no sensation. The same thing on a spiritual and psychological level.
So Leo, lion, represents that integration. Or it can represent the destruction. Every malady, every challenge we have, every form of trauma or suffering, every toxin or pollutant, that has in some way affected us, whether it’s our insecurities or our fears, lack of self-esteem, is essentially the destruction of your lion. That’s why it’s called Babylon. Babylon, the Bible tells us, comes from the word confusion. Babel. The babble. The confusion of languages, the confusion of the language of your soul and the language of your body. They don’t understand each other. And the, and the rebuilding of, and the restoration and the reclaiming of your very dignity and its expression in this world, is the building of your lion.
And you’ll see people who often behave like a lion, in a sense violent, angry is due to a dissonance that’s happening. Not justifying it, just explaining it. And those that change the world with tremendous power, are due to that harmony where it comes together.
So similar to the previous month, but not much more lower scale, Cancer, talked about the, the crab that also has that paradox. So the lion, of course, is a more pronounced way, is a personal paradox. There are two forces at work and they can go both directions. A king can be corrupt, can be a tyrant, can abuse. But a king could also be noble and humble and lead by example, and use his or her power to transform existence. So the Leo personality type has those two elements and therefore reflects itself at times where it can go one extreme, to be a very sad, tragic, destructive experience in life, or the exact opposite, a rebuilding of the highest order.
Our purpose in life ultimately is to create integration, is to unite. I mean, the essence of all science is the search for unity, trying to find the common denominator, the threads that connect all the details into one harmony, harmony within diversity. That is the lion of our lives. We want to build such a temple in our personal lives, our emotional lives, our psychological lives, our spiritual lives, the lives of our families, of our communities and by extension, to everyone we can reach, everywhere in the world. And as this time of year, the time of Leo, the sign of Leo, where you have those two options.
Unleashing the Power of the Divine Lion
So who will, who will rule? The confuser of Babylon or the divine lion that takes his power and transforms a hostile world, a challenging world into a Divine Garden, into a beautiful environment rich person with each of us? And each person is able to express his personal, his or personal mission in life, the dignity. The dignity of your individuality, the dignity of your uniqueness, of your indispensability. And then when you have that working, all the power in the world is then directed, harnessed, channeled to a tremendous revolutionary change.
Now, some of us were not necessarily born in this period of time, we still have that personality feature, may not be as dominant. But the lessons to all of us, but especially to those born in this period of time, and it’s interesting in our hemisphere, in contrast to the lower hemispheres, it’s a time of heat, summer, summer heat, especially this year. And he too has both extremes. The passion of heat, the fire of heat, the perspiration, which on one hand can be very, very overwhelming and even destructive, or saheed also brings passion in a positive way to transform things. Those that have that fire, the zeal, that burning at burning power, that burning sense of urgency.
So as in all things, that paradox go both directions. May you and I and all of us use that lion within us to be a king worthy of the title, that changes, that affects, that influences, that inspires and empowers everyone we come in contact with. And if we do indeed see somewhere where this may be misused or abused, we do what you can to inspire, always in a positive way to redirect and re-channel that lion energy into something that really creates true and lasting change.
So I hope I’ve done some justice to a obviously profound and comprehensive topic. This has been Simon Jacobson talking about “What the Stars Say About You,” covering Leo. Please join me every Sunday, I do this live 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time, New York, but it can be listened to and viewed anytime. It’s archived. Check us out at meaningforlife.com, are growing, growing YouTube channel. Please subscribe, and of course please share and I’d love to hear your thoughts, your feedback, your comments. Be blessed, be aligned that changes for the good, everything you come in contact with. Be well.
