Good or bad.
Right or wrong.
Success or failure.
All or nothing.
Extremes can feel good. They can simplify complicated situations, they can help us feel secure in moments of uncertainty, and they can help us draw necessary boundaries. Ironically, though, extremes are just as nuanced as all the things they’d like to rigidly define and that’s where our work lies this month.
The New Moon in Scorpio ushers in a month dedicated to intensity. This water sign is deep, penetrating, and unafraid of the places most of us spend our time avoiding. People born under this sign tend to experience the world in extremes: good or bad, right or wrong, all or nothing which is understandable given this energy. Scorpio is a sign of transformation, representing death and rebirth, a need to understand something to its core, to feel things fully.
Used intentionally, the intensity of this month is a gift. It’s the capacity to go deep, to refuse the surface, to sit with what most people fear or judge. Unconsciously, however, this energy can harden us into black-and-white thinking. “That person is bad,” “This situation is ideal,” “I could never do that.” It’s a conviction that a person, circumstance, even ourselves, are one thing permanently.
But this isn’t real. And this month, I want to invite us all to remember that nothing is 100% anything.
Mar Cheshvan: The Reversal Hidden in the Name
In the Hebrew calendar, the month of Scorpio is called Cheshvan, though it’s often called Mar Cheshvan. Mar means bitter. Scorpio is a month without any holidays, a month that can feel heavy, a month with a reputation for being difficult.
But the kabbalists teach us to look closer. If you reverse the letters of Mar, you get Ram, which means exalted, lifted up, elevated. The bitterness and the exaltation are made of exactly the same letters. Nothing is added or taken away. One word contains both negative and positive, both bitterness and exaltation. Extremes tell us this isn’t possible, yet the power of consciousness says when we change the way we see something, what we see changes.
Olam Hafuch: The Upside-Down World
There’s a companion teaching here that Scorpio brings into sharp relief. The kabbalists speak of Olam Hafuch which means “an upside-down world.” It comes from a startling vision recorded in the Talmud, in which a sage glimpses the true order of things and reports back: “I saw an upside-down world. The upper ones were below, and the lower ones were above.”
So many of the things we treat as not important turn out to be the most important of all. And so many of the things that consume us with worry never come to pass. In this upside-down world, what looks like a disaster may prove, in the long run, to be a tremendous gift. Positive and negative are not as absolute as we think.
This is why our challenges, perceived failures, disappointments, or delays are worth so much more than we might know in the moment. When things do go our way, often we unconsciously slip into a victim mentality: why is this happening to me? Life is so unfair. How could they do this to me? Victimhood is, itself, an extreme. I lost, others win. Life isn’t for me, it’s against me. This month, we can practice sitting in the discomfort of a challenge and being willing to see it differently.
Olam Hafuch invites us to ask “what if I’m seeing this upside down?” What if the thing I’m grieving is a hidden gift, and the certainty I’m clinging to that it’s a loss, is what’s causing me pain?
This is what it looks like to transform Mar to Ram.
What We Resist Will Persist
There’s a catch, though, and it’s an important one. We can only transform what we’re willing to look at.
We tend to assume growth comes from our strengths, our wins, the parts of ourselves we’re proud to show. But some of the deepest growth available to us comes from our struggles and our shortcomings because it is only by bringing our own negativity into the light that we can actually shift it. The parts of ourselves we refuse to look at don’t disappear. They go underground and covertly run the show.
When we deny the darker aspects of ourselves, the jealousy, the fear, the resentment, whatever it is we’d rather not admit, we don’t become free of them. We become judgmental toward others who exhibit those qualities. We get cynical. We harden. Yet, what we resist in ourselves will keep showing up around us, in our relationships and our circumstances, until we finally acknowledge it and make a real decision to change it. The very thing you can’t stand in someone else, very often, is pointing to something that you haven’t made peace with in yourself.
Fixing the Mind: Catching the Pre-Thought
And here is where the rubber meets the road. We can hear a thousand and one lectures about the importance of consciousness and certainty. We can nod along to every word about seeing the Light in the dark, about turning Mar to Ram. And then life happens, and suddenly, it’s all out the window. Because the mind itself needs to be fixed first. That, more than anything, is what this month is really about: not just better thoughts, but the deeper question underneath them — how do I fix my mind?
The kabbalists give us an extraordinary tool here. They teach that before every thought there is the hirhur or pre-thought. A thought doesn’t arrive fully formed out of nowhere. It builds. In fact, it can take something like a hundred of these fleeting pre-thoughts to gather into a single conscious thought. And this is the crucial part: once a thought has fully manifested, once the fear is there, the doubt is there, the worry or the sadness has taken form, it is harder to shift.
The good news is we can meet it earlier! We can catch it at the level of the pre-thought, before it ever manifests, and keep it from taking root. That’s the shift in awareness I want us to reach for this month. We can’t control our first thought, but we can control our second. When a fearful or negative thought crops up, catch it and consciously choose a positive one instead. This is how we harness the power of our thoughts to shift our experience.
Three Ways to Turn Mar to Ram This Month
Name one bitter thing and see if you can look at it differently. Think of a struggle you’re in the middle of right now, something that genuinely feels bitter. Don’t argue with the feeling. Instead, ask: if this exact situation held something exalted for me, what would it be?
Catch the pre-thought. Once a day, pause and notice the small, fleeting flickers moving beneath your thoughts, the little pulls toward worry, doubt, or comparison. Again, this isn’t about resisting because we know what that gets us. Just allow, catch one while it’s still small, and let it go, consciously choosing a more positive thought. Even if your second thought is just “I’m so glad I caught that.”
Bring one hidden thing into the light. Choose one aspect of yourself you tend to deny, something you passively judge in others is often the clue. Notice it and just examine it. Observe it without judging yourself or even needing it to be different. What changes in you when you do this?
Challenge will find us, it’s a part of our lives and, ultimately, our transformation. Mar Cheshvan doesn’t pretend otherwise, and neither should we. But bitter and exalted are made of the very same letters. The struggle in front of you and the growth you’re longing for may be far closer than they appear, existing in the same raw material, waiting to be turned around.
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