Come September 23rd, our closest and most precious star will align with the centre of the earth.

At precisely 3.54 a.m., Central European Time, the sun will shine directly over the equator, and the equal length of night and day will be the same—everywhere in the world.

This moment of cosmic balance is called equinox, meaning equal night in Latin. It is a moment of sacred significance to our world.

It is a moment of exceptional consequence. A moment to protect and promote equality, fairness, and balance—not only on this night, but every night, and every new day thereafter.

Pause for a moment and marvel at our precious planet. It seems to grow smaller and more beautiful, yet no less bizarre, with every online search and flight to who-knows-where.

As we walk purposefully through our world toward tolerance and emancipation, we seem to take two steps forward and then one step back toward intolerance and tyranny. Yet still, on balance, we have taken a step forward. That’s progress.

One half of our human nature wants to climb over every mountain just to see what’s on the other side. The other half wants to stay exactly where we are, safe and secure in our valley where time stands still.

These two halves of the human heart, the human mind, need one another. Otherwise the progressive types would always be running off the edge of some unseen cliff, and the conservative types would stagnate in their unchanging valley.

In our present time of turmoil and imbalance it seems that one half of the world has forgotten how much it needs the other. Our very nature sets us against ourselves.

The real question is: will we recognise how one hand washes the other, reconcile our differences, and realise we are simply two halves of a whole?

I believe we will.

Slowly, painfully so, we are beginning to let go of our Stone Age adversarial tribalism. Instead, many of us seek peace with our neighbour who looks different to us, who speaks in a different way, who thinks, believes, and loves in a different way.

Our stone axes have been replaced by bronze, iron, steel, and…splitting the atom. We have become ever more sophisticated in making tools to kill one another, and ever more sophisticated in making tools to heal one another.

The superior part of our human nature knows it is better to heal than to harm.

Equinox is a night to seek the most difficult healing, the most difficult peace. We open the door and welcome those we are in conflict with. It is a night to love them. Not with wide-eyed naivety, but with our eyes wide open to every possibility.

It is a night to tap into our conscientious compassion and begin to dissolve old, destructive patterns belonging to our primal past.

Out of the dissolution of those outdated paradigms arise new opportunities and new possibilities to embrace the equality to which the evolving laws of humanity entitle us.

In the wake of that evolution, we will enjoy greater freedoms, hand in hand with a greater responsibility to honour and protect those freedoms. Then we will no longer judge or be judged by the character of our gender but rather by the content of our character.

The day after equinox, with the sunrise, we might lift up our fatigued faces to our brightest star and smile together at a new day of promise.

Step by step, we are evolving—by trial and error, by temperance and terror, beyond our old adversarial dynamics, evolving consciously and purposefully in our core humanity toward genuine equality. Not just in the letter of our laws, but also in the spirit of equality where no laws exist.

We live in a world where the political systems are cynically skewed to please some of the people some of the time. Perhaps it was always so. No single system known can please all the people all of the time. Perhaps that is our ultimate goal.

Until then we must abide in trust, and believe we can create more compassionate and tolerant societies that please most of the people most of the time.

I believe we will form more harmonious domestic relationships.

I believe we can further honour and respect one another in our work spaces.

I believe we will be more diligent in the defence of justice, the promotion of general welfare, and secure the blessings of equality in our common pursuit of prosperity.

I believe.

In our meandering march toward these equalities, we must be mindful not to fall foul to the same misdemeanours of those clinging to the old adversarial patterns and power struggles. Let us not seek to satisfy our frustrations by drinking from the bitter cup of anger.

It is equinox, so let us pursue our egalitarian endeavour with the shared cup of equanimity.

We must never allow our protests, passionate though they are, to degenerate into violence, either verbal or physical. And if such violences are perpetrated against us, as is so often the current convention, we must rise above them, meeting aggression with fearless and peaceful determination.

Let us remember, it is equality of opportunity that is our intention, not equality of outcome. Human beings are diverse and the expression of those diversities through the choices we make does not necessarily indicate an injustice, prejudice, or discrimination.

There are no pressure groups seeking to satisfy quotas and bring equality of the genders to work on oil refineries, construction sites, in steel factories and logging mills. Nor should there be. Equality of opportunity does mean we will always choose the opportunity offered us.

It is the freedom to choose that is the expression of equality, not the expression of choice that makes us equal.

An evolved and evolving constitution of consciousness is evident in your life and in mine, both in our hearts and minds. It is evident in the way we speak with one another today, how we abide with one another tomorrow, and how we remember to forgive each other for yesterday’s mistakes.

It is evident in the way we trust before we fear, in the way we take personal responsibility before we blame, in the way we offer an open hand of friendship before the closed fist of a foe.

It is evident in the way we sow before we reap, in the way we give before we take, and in the way we love before we hate.

It is evident that we are all created equal, and indeed that some are not more equal than others. I believe that each man, woman, and child are inherently blessed by the laws of nature with certain undeniable rights, among them being: equality, freedom, and the unimpeded pursuit of happiness.

It is self-evident, and evidence of our true self.

It is equinox.