LOOKING TO THE SKY

My morning meditation begins with emptying whatever is on my mind into my journal. Then I'm ready for something new. However, this morning, I had a compelling curiosity about what was happening with our cosmic neighbors, the planets who circle the Sun with us. I have been deliberately avoiding astrology for a couple of years in hope that I could clear the cobwebs of habit and eventually get a fresh view. But this morning curiosity compelled me to check in with these neighbors.

I found some intense activity going on with our planetary family. Mercury the messenger, Mars the warrior protector and the Sun, heart of our system were huddled together in the sign of Scorpio who is famous for turning whatever it touches inside out. To put it bluntly Scorpio is about radical transformations such as encountering death and whatever follows. Its lessons are overpowering, and the main theme is:

Reality in not what you think it is!

If you think you know what’s going on, your mind is clogged with assumptions and will soon be cleared of that mistake. There is movement on deep physical, spiritual and emotional levels--“Things fall apart, the center cannot hold,” to quote poet W.B. Yates. Of course, we all know that few stay upright and balanced when confronted by life altering changes, and that is what concerned me most.

I offer this exploration of the state of our neighbors in the sky. It’s just a response to what came to mind as I looked at the current relationships among our ever changing neighbors. I was surprised by how intense it was, but I can’t deny that I’ve felt rumblings from above. Sometimes, I choose to ignore them, the way I ignore thunder and lightning, unless it strikes too close. I’m no expert in astrology although I’ve long believed its efficacy. I know it does reveal much to those who learn to read it. But the possibilities are so vast that no one notices the whole picture. However, what I saw this morning set me thinking.

Our world is already bubbling over with conspiracy theorists, climate deniers, and the politically unhinged. Fear is aroused on the deepest levels when the old ways aren’t working. Another famous saying, this one by F.D Roosevelt. “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Yes, I'm becoming increasingly aware of how dangerous fear really is. I’m not talking about running from a lion, or a forest fire. That is a clean fear of an obvious danger. The kind of fear that is dangerous, is fear rising from the imagination like a long dormant volcano that one assumed was safe. That kind of fear is free ranging and looking for something or someone to attach to. That kind fear brings out the worst in humanity, except perhaps, for the few advanced souls among us. Fear is catching. I remember an unusually hot day when I was in the fourth grade. Our music teacher had us practicing as a choir. One girl fainted and then another. Soon they started falling like autumn leaves. The teacher had quite a job halting the hysteria.

Saturn, with his scythe for chopping down the arrogant, and questioning the validity of any change, is in Aquarius, the free thinker (how free can that be?). It is also in a stressful relationship with trickster of surprises, Uranus in the normally earthy sign Taurus. Another incompatible combination. My imagination immediately conjures Uranus dissolving the illusion of Terra Firma. We are all made of atoms that are apparently made of no-thing. There is nothing (no-thing) in this universe and beyond but dancing energy conjuring the chimera of some-thing by the will of the Celestial Magician.

Pluto is a cosmic outsider with a non-conforming orbit. It is small as planets go, but powerful in density and influence, it represents a great cosmic law. This planet is named after the god of the underworld who snatched the innocent goddess Proserpina by her foot as she picked flowers and pulled her into his subterranean lair. The planet Pluto still grabs our unsuspecting naïve self and pulls it into the dark hole of the unknown. Naivete is lost forever. But of course, it must be lost because what you see is often not what you get. We humans normally see what we expect to see while being blind at the depth from which life emerges.

Thus Pluto, the cosmic outsider at the trapdoor of our solar system introduces the cosmic law of death and rebirth, appearance and disappearance. Pluto rules in autumn when in the northern hemisphere, leaves fall from the trees and the green things go dormant. Death is but a hidden world where we enter another womb invisible to the surface world. Of course, this sunny world is in its turn hidden from the other world beneath the veil. A balance of opposites is natures continuous struggle. There is no death, just transformation of the Prima Materia into the next iteration, hopefully on the way to a better metal.   

Old ways of thinking and believing seldom go down without a fight. Saturn, whose forms are made to last must now square off with Uranus, the cosmic trickster that knocks down walls instead of politely opening Saturn’s sturdy gates. We are taught that we are what we think---not!  Inside we are as mysterious as the cosmic will that created us. You might ask, if that is so, why do we become so attached to that which we believe is truth or reality. I should have mentioned that we and the cosmos we live in were not a one-off creation, although God rested on the seventh day, according to Genesis, it was only one day. We and our cosmic home are always a work in progress.  

As soon as we become attached to the truth, we are already obsolete. I’m sitting in a solid chair, typing these words and nothing of it is solid. As I look at this page, I have only my limited vision and functioning body parts to express these thoughts. It’s all an exclusionary construct. Once created, we continue to create in a holographic pattern.

My three-dimensional journey through time and space will inevitably wind down, and sometimes I’m very grateful that is so. This is from my small self—the one that changes with the weather and political climate. The larger version knows that it is time for humility, flexibility, faith in the Great Mind of the cosmos and that its time to get crack’n by sending waves of peace and faith across the cosmic lake we swim in. Like creates like as we enter the age of Aquarius, the sign of reflecting waves.