Ancient Wisdom for Chaotic Times

Finding Your Centre When Everything Around You Is Falling Apart

Do you recall in my post back in mid December mentioning possible obstacles to your plans, goals or visions? Well I have come up against a very large one, a family emergency that has stopped me in my tracks and diverted my priorities to the care of my 93 year old mum.

Along with the challenges, there have been great gifts within this diversion, something I will perhaps write more on in the future. Meanwhile my work has been put on hold while I tend to mum and her well-being as she slowly recovers from a broken hip. And while I do get a couple of hours of “me” time in the evening, I am without my usual resources and tools, and indeed mental bandwidth, to keep up with my writing. My hope is that normal service can resume soon dear reader, for there is so much epoch changing astrology, now and in the months ahead, the bow waves already very present in the world and clearly visible. And I’m keen to help bring some meaning and sense making to assist you in navigating these times.

What has kept me sane and able to show up with grace throughout the last month is my connection to spirit, the angelic realm in particular, wisdom texts and practices. The essay below was drafted before my current family challenges. I post it now in lieu of an astrology update, in the hope that it provides a reminder of the resources available to us when faced with challenging times and circumstances. With love & blessings, Linda 💜

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Finding Your Centre When Everything Around You Is Falling Apart

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the state of the world right now, you’re not alone. The systems we’ve relied upon are showing their cracks—politically, economically and socially. News cycles spin with crisis after crisis. It can feel like we are standing in a tumble dryer while reality rearranges itself around us.

So how do we navigate these times with more grace and less fear? As a practising Hellenistic astrologer, I am deeply drawn to the spiritual and philosophical understanding of the ancient world and its deep wisdom. One of these philosophers was the Neoplatonist, Plotinus. Writing during the Crisis of the Third Century (a period of plague, civil war, economic collapse, and invasions), Plotinus understood something profound about how to remain centred during chaos. And his insights, rooted in the spiritual wisdom and philosophy of his time, offer practical guidance to help us navigate the chaos we find ourselves in today.

Plotinus’ view was that while external circumstances change and systems dissolve, there exists a deeper reality – a part of us connected to something eternal and unchanging. We are not talking here about avoiding the real challenges we face or pretending everything is okay. Instead, it’s about finding inner stability that enables us to respond wisely rather than react impulsively.

Understanding What’s Really Happening

The institutions and systems around us are falling apart because they’ve become disconnected from their original purpose. They’ve become rigid structures, defending themselves rather than serving the people and ideals for which they were created.

Plotinus would say these forms have lost their soul—they’re running on empty. And when forms become too rigid or corrupt, they must dissolve so something new can emerge. This is the natural rhythm of how change happens in our world. It’s uncomfortable, sometimes frightening, but not meaningless.

What we’re experiencing is a collective passage through what I’ve called “the birth canal”—a time of necessary constriction and darkness before emergence into new possibilities. We can’t skip this process, but we can navigate it more consciously.

A brief clarification about my approach: While I draw heavily on Plotinus’s wisdom for navigating turbulent times, my own philosophical leaning aligns more closely with his successor Iamblichus when it comes to the material realm. Plotinus viewed matter as the lowest level of reality—almost a dimming or loss of being—and taught that spiritual ascent required turning away from material concerns toward pure contemplation. Iamblichus, by contrast, insisted that the material world is ensouled and encoded with divine powers. Rather than fleeing matter, we can work through it to reach the divine—through ritual, symbol, creative practice, and engagement with beauty in physical form. This is why several of my seven practices emphasise embodied action: creating beauty, serving in the world, and working with symbolic languages like astrology.

I find Iamblichus’s more affirming view of matter both philosophically compelling and practically necessary for our times—we cannot transcend our lived reality. Yet Plotinus’s core insight remains invaluable: that we possess an inner stability connected to something eternal, and that cultivating this connection allows us to navigate outer chaos with wisdom and grace. The two philosophers differ in their metaphysics but converge in their recognition that we are dual citizens—beings who participate in both current and eternal realities.¹

Seven Practices for Navigating Turbulent Times

Drawing from Plotinus’s timeless wisdom, here are seven practices that can help you stay grounded, purposeful, and even hopeful during these chaotic times.

1. Create Daily Rituals That Reconnect You With Something Larger

When the outer world feels unstable, establishing regular practices that ground you in something deeper becomes essential. We are not talking about escaping reality - it’s about resourcing yourself so that you can engage with reality from a place of strength rather than depletion.

Plotinus emphasised the importance of what he called “contemplation”—regular time spent turning inward to reconnect with the eternal aspect of ourselves. This might look like:

• Morning stillness: Before checking your phone or news, spend some time in meditation, prayer, or simply sitting quietly with a cup of tea, consciously connecting with your breath and the present moment.

• Time in nature: Walk without your phone (or at least with it turned off), letting the natural world remind you of her rhythms. Notice the seasons continuing their enduring cycles regardless of political chaos.

• Creative practice: Engage with art, music, poetry, or craft work that absorbs you completely. These moments of flow connect you with something beyond your worried thoughts.

• Sacred reading: Spend time with wisdom texts, inspirational writing, or poetry that speaks to your soul rather than your anxiety.

The point isn’t perfection but consistency. Even five minutes daily creates an anchor point, reminding you that there’s more to reality than the news cycle suggests.

2. Distinguish Between What’s Real and What’s Theatre

We’re bombarded with information designed to trigger fear, outrage, and anxiety. While real challenges exist, much of what fills our screens is surface drama—what Plotinus might call “shadows on the cave wall,” effects of deeper causes but not the causes themselves.

This doesn’t mean ignoring current events, but instead developing discernment about what actually matters and what’s manufactured to keep us discombobulated and disempowered.

Practical approaches:

• Limit news consumption: Choose one or two trusted sources and check them once daily rather than scrolling constantly. Your nervous system will thank you.

• Focus on deeper patterns: Rather than getting lost in daily political theatre, look for underlying trends and shifts. What’s actually changing beneath the noise?

• Ask better questions: Instead of “What terrible thing happened today?” ask “What would help me respond wisely to what’s happening?” or “Where is my energy best directed?”

• Notice what you can influence: Distinguish between what you can actually affect (your responses, your local community, your own wellbeing) and what you cannot (global events, other people’s choices, political outcomes).

Plotinus taught that focusing on eternal patterns rather than temporary chaos helps us perceive what’s truly important. The collapsing systems are real, but they’re not the most profound truth about existence.

3. Serve Others From Fullness, Not From Depletion

Many of us feel compelled to help, to make a difference, and to alleviate others’ suffering during difficult times. This impulse comes from a good place—our natural connection to each other and to something larger than ourselves.

But Plotinus understood that service offered from exhaustion or guilt doesn’t sustain us or others. When we give from a state of depletion, we eventually burn out or become resentful. Sustainable service flows from our connection to something abundant and renewing.

How this looks in practice:

• Fill your own cup first: Just as with the aeroplane oxygen mask instruction, ensure your basic needs for rest, nourishment, connection, and spiritual replenishment are met before extending yourself endlessly.

• Serve from your gifts: What comes naturally to you? What energises rather than drains you? Your service is most effective when it aligns with your genuine skills and interests.

• Set boundaries: Saying no to requests that would deplete you isn’t selfish—it preserves your capacity to serve where you’re most needed.

• Notice the difference: Pay attention to how different activities feel in your body. Service from fullness feels energising even when tiring. Service from depletion feels heavy and obligatory.

When you’ve taken time to reconnect with your centre (practice #1), you naturally serve from overflow rather than from a desperate attempt to fix what feels broken. Your presence becomes more helpful because you’re not adding your own panic to the situation.

4. Trust That Intelligence Is Working Through the Chaos

This is perhaps the most challenging practice, especially when things look dire. Plotinus taught that the cosmos is infused with divine intelligence—what he called “Soul”—that guides the unfolding of events even when we can’t perceive the pattern.

We are not talking about passive resignation or blind faith that everything will work out. It’s an active trust that allows us to respond appropriately rather than freeze in fear or react in panic.

Consider: you’re living through a time of profound transformation. Old systems that no longer serve us are dissolving. This is uncomfortable, but it’s also necessary for something new to emerge. The dissolution itself is part of the intelligence at work.

Cultivating this trust:

• Look for examples in your own life: Remember times when something falling apart eventually led to something better. Your resilience in the face of past difficulties proves that you can navigate uncertainty.

• Observe nature’s wisdom: Trees drop their leaves in autumn, appearing dead, yet spring always returns. Nature demonstrates that death and rebirth are natural cycles, not failures.

• Stay curious: Instead of deciding “this is terrible and will only get worse,” ask “what wants to emerge here?” or “what is this chaos making possible?”

• Connect with others who navigate well: Find people who face difficulties with grace. Their example reminds you it’s possible and will give you strength.

This trust doesn’t mean you ignore problems or fail to take action. It means you act from wisdom rather than fear, from possibility rather than despair.

5. Work With Beauty, Meaning, and the Symbolic

Plotinus wrote that beauty arrests us, stops our worried thinking, and awakens something deeper within us. In difficult times, engaging with beauty and creating meaning isn’t frivolous—it’s essential spiritual work.

When we work with art, myth, astrology, poetry, or any symbolic language, we’re connecting with patterns that exist beyond the chaos of current events. We’re reminding ourselves that human experience has depth and purpose that transcends immediate circumstances.

Ways to engage:

• Create something: Paint, write, garden, cook, craft—any act of creation connects you with the generative force that moves through all life.

• Engage with myth and archetype: Read stories of transformation, study the wisdom traditions, work with astrological insights. These symbolic languages help us understand our experiences as part of larger patterns.

• Seek beauty intentionally: Visit art galleries, listen to music that moves you, watch sunrises, or arrange flowers. Let beauty interrupt your worry.

• Share what you create: Your creative output, your insights, your perspective—these are gifts that help others find meaning too. You don’t need to be a professional artist to offer beauty to the world.

This isn’t escapism. Beauty and meaning-making are the ways the soul speaks, revealing deeper truths that become visible and accessible. In chaotic times, they’re acts of resistance against despair, hopelessness and overwhelm.

6. Remember You’re Living in Two Worlds Simultaneously

You’re an ensouled person in a specific time and place, dealing with practical concerns—bills, health, relationships, the challenges of daily life. This requires attention and appropriate action.

But you’re also connected to something eternal and unchanging—call it soul, spirit, higher self, or simply the awareness that witnesses your experience. This aspect of you remains untouched by the chaos, observing with compassion but not consumed by fear.

Plotinus taught that we have what he called “dual citizenship”—we’re simultaneously mortal and eternal. The mistake is identifying completely with either realm. If we focus only on the eternal, we become disconnected from practical reality and our responsibility to engage. If we focus only on the temporal, we become overwhelmed by circumstances and lose perspective.

Living with dual awareness:

• Check in with both levels: Throughout your day, pause to notice: “What’s my immediate situation requiring?” and “What does my deeper wisdom perceive about this?”

• Hold both truths: “Yes, this …… (fill in the dots) situation is genuinely concerning AND my essential nature remains whole and connected to something larger.”

• Act practically while remembering eternally: Pay your bills, care for your health, and engage with your community—all while maintaining a connection to the part of you that isn’t defined by circumstances.

• Use transitions as reminders: When you walk through doorways, get in your car, or sit down to eat, let these moments serve as reminders to reconnect with your deeper awareness.

This practice keeps you grounded and engaged while preventing the overwhelm that comes from believing temporary chaos is the whole story.

7. Choose Love Over Fear, Again and Again

Here’s perhaps the most practical guidance: in every moment of uncertainty, ask yourself, “What would love do?” This simple question cuts through complexity and reconnects you with your truest nature.

Plotinus taught that everything emerges from what he called “the One”—the ultimate source that is essentially identical with goodness and love. When we act from our connection to this source, we naturally express wisdom, compassion, and appropriate action.

Fear fragments us, making us contract, defend, and separate. Love—understood not as mere emotion but as our fundamental orientation toward wholeness and the good—allows us to remain open, connected, and responsive even under challenging circumstances. Live love as a verb.

Practising the choice:

• Notice when fear is driving: Tension in your body, urgent impulses to act, catastrophic thinking, desire to control outcomes—these signal fear-based consciousness.

• Pause and ask: “What would love do right now?” Sometimes love rests. Sometimes it acts. Sometimes it speaks the truth. Sometimes it listens. There’s no formula, but the question itself shifts your awareness.

• Start small: You don’t need to love your percived enemies or try to change global injustice. Start with choosing loving responses to your own inner critic, to the driver who cut you off, to your child’s tantrum.

• Understand love includes boundaries: Love doesn’t mean tolerating harm or accepting injustice. Sometimes the most loving response is a firm “no” or active resistance to what causes suffering.

Every small choice to act from love rather than fear—to respond rather than react, to trust rather than defend, to create rather than destroy—these align you with the deepest current of reality and contribute to collective transformation.

The Deeper Promise

What Plotinus offers us across nearly two millennia is something we desperately need right now: the assurance that chaos is not meaningless, that our deepest nature remains untouched by turbulence, and that the inner work we’re doing matters profoundly.

The systems falling apart around us have become disconnected from their soul, their original purpose. What emerges after this dissolution has the potential to be more aligned with wisdom, justice, and genuine care—but only if enough of us do the inner work while remaining engaged with practical reality.

You’re not just surviving a difficult time; you’re actively participating in a transformative process that has been building for generations. Every moment you choose presence over panic, every act of service from a place of fullness rather than depletion, and every time you create beauty or meaning amidst chaos—these aren’t small things. They’re how new possibilities are born.

Plotinus lived and taught during the Crisis of the Third Century—a fifty-year period of plague, economic collapse, civil wars, and barbarian invasions that brought the Roman Empire to the brink of destruction. Yet his philosophy not only survived but flourished, offering guidance to countless people across cultures and centuries precisely because it addressed both transcendent truth and practical wisdom for navigating systemic breakdown.

The times ahead may become more chaotic before new forms stabilise. But those who cultivate inner stability while remaining compassionately engaged become sources of light for others—not because they have all the answers, but because they embody the possibility of navigating difficulty with grace, purpose, and love rather than fear.

You already possess everything you need to navigate these times. The practices above simply help you remember and activate what’s already within you—the eternal aspect of yourself that remains connected to wisdom, love, and the creative intelligence moving through all things.

Trust yourself. Trust the process and trust that your presence, centred and compassionate, is precisely what the world needs right now.

1. The lineage:

1. Plato: c. 428-348 BCE

2. Plotinus: 204-270 CE - founded Neoplatonism

3. Porphyry: 234-305 CE - Plotinus’s direct student who organised his teachings into the Enneads

4. Iamblichus: c. 245-325 CE - studied under Porphyry (or was at least deeply influenced by Porphyry’s writings). Iamblichus developed his own school of Neoplatonism that modified and expanded on Plotinus’s ideas.