Last Sunday in Santa Fe PQ and I sat on the plaza eating ice
cream cones watching people enjoy the greening grass as birds seemed to float
on the air from tree to tree. The
clarity of spring made hope seem as close as the grass on the ground and I felt
a bit high from the fresh air. A young man with dread locks drifted on his park
bench almost as high as the birds. He was in another dimension but somehow his obviously
blissful state fit the light as air afternoon. The whole world seemed transparent.
Time moves by quickly holding a measure of eternity like a pond. But on a round
world it can only flow in circles.
I feel subtle changes in the experience of time. I’m also more
aware of how small our individual piece of it is. Time down here on earth moves
too fast to catch so I mentally zoom out to scope a larger span, always hoping
for a time-lapse shot. I know there are
horrible things happening with each tick on the cosmic clock. It seems they occur closer together lately. There seems to be a crisis generator
operating out of the mass mind. Disasters
seldom come one at a time. But, the transcendent
world seems still and remote while we desperate humans thrash about in panic, like
ants whose hill was kicked by a giant.
Strewn across the earth are all the horrors of the past. When I watch
the evening news, I remember the way my uncle’s cattle bellowed and stomped enthralled
and in fear while encircling the area where one of their own was being
butchered, although greatly disturbed they couldn’t leave the scene. It appears
that 24-hour news spawns the same reaction in the human herd.
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| Rain on the Mountain |
The beautiful and the terrible are parallel channels.
Perhaps one couldn’t exist without the other as a defining contrast. Yet, they
aren’t honorably equal. The terrible emerges as a shadow behind the beautiful, especially
when too much contrast makes the shadow very dark.
Astrologically, there were some explosive
aspects at the time of the Boston Marathon bombing, and the Texas fertilizer
plant explosion. Pluto square Uranus, the god of the underworld,
instigator of deep plunges into dark places, and radical cleansing experiences
was in a tense aspect with Uranus the planet of quirky behavior and unexpected changes.
In addition, the Sun was conjunct Mars the god of war in the sign of Aries,
traditionally ruled by Mars, but so was Venus goddess of love and beauty, in
this case perhaps, a bitter twisted love. Two young men who seemed normal on
the outside but were apparently building up an explosive inner pressure, do
they also reflect a larger unconscious tension. Their use of an exploding
pressure cooker has a powerful symbolic facet. Terrorists often act out unconscious
contracts and collective tensions.
Complex times push us beyond ourselves into situations that
bring out the best and the worst. Again, the contrast makes the picture pop. I
sense we are all inwardly dispersing on the floodwaters, blowing over shores with
hurricanes and blanketed in deep snow. This summer in the Southwest, it appears
that we will bake like the dry earth, but it is all evidence of primal forces.
We have the weather inside as well as outside and we are both victims and co-creators
whether we like it or not.
I don’t believe that our neighboring planets cause anything,
but the universe is just that and the changing patterns of the cosmos are replicated
on every level. Meaning is ours, as we explain to ourselves why the gods should
not eat us. I remember that Gurdjieff used to tell his students that we humans
are food for the Moon. I’m beginning to get a glimmer of what he meant. For one thing, the Moon has always been
associated astrologically to soul, moods, emotional connection to family and
tribe and sense of belonging. When distorted by unfulfilled emotional needs it
does indeed become a predator hiding behind our personal shadow. One of our
modern delusions is the belief that we humans are rational creatures. It should
be obvious that we are first emotional and that emotion trumps reason every
time. Here in America we fear terrorists and feel safer with our guns even though
a family member is more likely to shoot us than a terrorist is to blow us up. It
is this primal fear of the dangerous outsider, someone from an alien tribe that
grips us. Ironically, probably the same emotion inspires the terrorists.
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| Potted Cat Through the Window |
I’m
not suggesting that we should try to be more rational. Part of the problem is
that we are trying to be rational and the much stronger emotional component
devours reason and takes command. What I
believe is more significant is that we unapologetically honor our emotional
nature and develop it rather than leaving it in a primitive undeveloped state. Emotional
desires hijack reason and take it for a ride. There are IQ tests to evaluate
intellectual potential and ability but emotion develops as best it can or as
worst, as the case may be.
Once again, a weekend is approaching. It is beautiful outside after several days of
cold and wind. I’m trying to focus on some projects that have been awaiting my
attention for several weeks. What is the emotional component that keeps me
sidetracked? I’ve been noticing that such interruptions are also avoidance
reactions to ideas that challenge me emotionally. It is time to step up the
game and come out of hiding. The winter
nap is over. Of course, there are
seasons on many levels. The heart holds this knowledge. I must relearn its wisdom.
