Alternate Shots

For those of us who aren’t golfers, that’s another name for a Foursome, and it describes pretty well a Grand Cross, where each of the four poles demands attention, but each in turn.  Because it’s in balance, nobody gets too far outa line, even if it’s a four-way tug-o-war.  And there’s nothing like seeing every situation from four different orthogonal angles to understand it thoroughly!  Orthogonal means right angles, and in abstract mathematics orthogonality implies independence.  That’s kindofan artifact of Euclidian geometry, which is enormously limiting, but useful nonetheless.  I’m taking some liberties here with mathematics, but they’re astrologically appropriate.

Independence means that new information is contributed.  If you look at things from the Repub perspective, and then from the 1% perspective, you aren’t going to learn a lot new from the latter.  But it you add the 99% perspective to the Repub perspective, you start to see more of the World, and you have to start recognizing contradictions and exercising your Both/Ands, which always means personal growth.  That’s independence.  Even adding the biblethumping perspective to the Repub perspective will be eye-opening, especially when you appreciate how explosively comedic that combination will become when they quit with the rhetoric and start actually listening to one another.

So what about this Mars Grand Cross?  I mean, firstly, why do we call it a Mars Grand Cross – it has four corners.  Why not call it a Pallas Grand Cross, or a Dragon Grand Cross?  Well, foremost, Mars is also a corner of the Grand Trine, which makes Mars the high focus of the whole horoscope.  We could cite other reasons, but their just ancillary.  For instance, Mars is retrograde, and Mars spends less than three months in retro, with more than two years between such adventures.  That’s less than one ninth of the time.  Compare Mercury, which is retrograde one day out of every six, or any of the outer planets, which spend almost half their time deep in reconsideration.  This has a lot to do with Mars’s reputation as impulsive and careless of effect – like the average teenager, Mars doesn’t spend a lot of time in self-reflection.

It’s definitely true that a Dragon Grand Cross is no ordinary Grand Cross.  The Nodes always oppose one another, so there’s half the battle.  But the Nodes indicate our Karmic Source and Destination, so when two planets align in a Cross with the Nodal axis, we pay attention.  Which is exactly what a Dragon Grand Cross, or any planet on a Node or Squaring a Node is about – paying Attention.  Because a major angle to a Grand Cross wakes us up, inevitably increasing our Consciousness.  We learn a little or a lot about how to accept where we been with Neutrality, and how to accept where we’re going without reservation.

We often regret what we do on impulse, because if we thought about it first, we might not have done it.  So a Mars-Dragon Grand Cross gives us alotta opportunities to review our lifetime of regrets, so we can tap them out and get Neutral about them.  And our impulsiveness is usually closer to our True Self or Whole Self than our judging self is.  So if we can liberate our impulsiveness without getting slammed for breaking too many rules, we can edge a lot closer to that all-important partnership with our Unconscious.  It’s kinda the process of civilizing our impulsiveness, so we can “be as crazy as ya want and they’ll luvya for it,” as they say about a Sun-Uranus line in yer astrogeography.

So Mars-Dragon is a true gift of Consciousness, especially if Mars is in a rare introspective mood, and Mercury is in Deep Observer mode too – Mercury turned retrograde last night.

And Pallas?  Well, there’s nothing more educational than a Mars-Pallas opposition, because Mars and Pallas are natural opposites.  Mars is impulse, Pallas is boundaries.  Mars lashes out, Pallas calmly judges what’s appropriate.  Mars is Action, Pallas is Wisdom.  I mean, what if our impulses served our aims perfectly!  We wouldn’t have a care in the World!  Well, if we were immune to other people’s criticisms and control issues we wouldn’t.  Think how effective you could be if you were wired to the tracks that led to your highest goals and you didn’t have any brakes.  If you can Both/And Mars and Pallas, yer sailin’!

What about Pallas-Dragon?  Well, Pallas doesn’t judge.  It defends, when necessary, but without judgment.  So it’s great for sifting through past deeds and their emotional tracks, judging their utility, deciding which to keep and which to discard, and moving on.  And equally good at seeing a mission and discerning which attitudes and actions would be most effective for fulfilling it.  So there aint much to lose with a Mars-Pallas-Dragon Grand Cross, except our emotional baggage.

Juno and Chiron play the background melodies.  We’ve been talking about Juno all along without naming her – Identity and Consciousness are Juno’s toolkit.  She usually goes nameless because Identity is usually Unconscious, though we’re changin that, right?  Chiron, meanwhile, is about transcending our limitations, taking what was so dire that we though it was just reality and didn’t know we were in despair about it, we just thought it impossible, and turning it into Miracles by shifting the foundations of our Reality.  Nothing to lose there except our Naivete and our Fear.

Throw in the bounty of Grace from the Grand Trine, and Zowie!  You guys are probably all ascending tomorrow!  Remember what the Buddha said – once you achieve Samadhi, of course you’re going to come back to help the rest of us, cuz it’s the compassionate thing to do!  Right?  Right?  Hey, where’d everybody go?  We can use some help here!  Great practice for Both/Anding a Planetary Split, eh?  I mean, if you ascend to Earth 2, and also stay on Earth 1, it’s not the same you in both places, is it.  Not from the perspective of Identity.  Of course, from the perspective of Consciousness, it’s both you.  I mean, we are All You, right?  Or All Me?  Or All One?  Or Alone?  Where would we be without Separation?

We just gotta Both/And Samadhi and Separation.

An Old Woman manifesting a Young Warrior with her Vision, aka a “book” of Muscovite Crystals.  I’d never seen the Warrior till just now.  Muscovite is a Mica, if forms in sheets, and when the sheets are stacked up, it’s called a “book.”  Muscovite symbolizes exactly what we been talking about.  It’s a Potassium Aluminum Phyllosilicate – like Phyllo dough is Mica – with Water locked into the Crystal structure.

Mars Caught Smoking in the Loo

Well, not only is Mars closer to Earth than it will be at any other time this year (which just means we’re on the same side of the Sun), but he’s in the news smoking up a storm.  And the Star of the major drama of the next week and a half.

I tell people that the most powerful chart anybody can have, is one that features both a Grand Cross and a Grand Trine, that share a common corner.  Well that’s what dominates the next coupla weeks, and Mars is at the common corner.  Let’s digress a minute…

A Square occurs when two planets are one fourth of the way around the circle from one another, or three signs apart.  It symbolizes Mastery through Challenge – it presents itself as a puzzle or problem, but it has no solution.  It’s a heuristic – it serves only to teach.  So for instance, a person with a Square between Venus and Mars usually encounters life-long difficulties with Relationship – simply because their current life does not include enjoying Relationship, it includes only learning about Relationship.  How do we learn?  Not by doing things “right,” but by doing things “wrong.”  We Master a subject by exploring it’s edges, by uncovering its hidden taboos, and by eschewing conventional wisdom.

A Grand Cross is four Squares lined up in series, to circle the entire Zodiac.  The Grand Cross is actually easier than a single Square, because it’s “complete” and in balance.  It has symmetry.  However, it has the additional Challenge that each of the four planets and each of the four Squares must constantly be rebalanced relative to the other three.  So it requires constant vigilance.  A victim of a Grand Cross is constantly tossed from one pole to the other by constantly varying winds.  A master of a Grand Cross has gained wisdom on a wide variety of topics and mastery of a wide variety of skills.

Four is the number of the Emperor, symbolizing Dominion, control over one’s domain.  One moves from being a victim of a Square or a Grand Cross to a master when one becomes Conscious of it’s nature, realizes what the current lifetime is about, and stops coveting the perfection that they so clearly see but can never achieve.  When one sees Reality as a constantly moving variation on the perfect blueprint, rather than flaws in the form manifested from the blueprint.

Simply put, the blueprint is an Archetype, and we are slaves to Archetypes till we become Conscious of them and separate our Identity from them.  Ever notice how an impending cold increases your desire for Sugar?  The cold virus has hold of your Will.  You are feeling the virus’s craving for Sugar, and misinterpreting it as your own craving.  If you knew it was a cold virus doing the craving, you’d never feed it!  But if you think the craving is your own, then it’s an act of self-loathing to deprive yourself!  See why we’re always harping about Identity?  Because it’s the most powerful lever you have for dealing with Karma.

A Trine occurs when two planets are one third of the way ’round the Zodiac from one another, four signs apart.  A Trine represents Grace.  It also often comes through as arrogance, as the carrier of a Trine may have a hard time seeing that other people do not share their good luck.  Haven’t seen his chart, but Romney’s constantly getting himself in trouble for revealing his Triney nature.  A team functions when each member performs their assigned roles. In order to relate to others in a team, a Trine must become Conscious, so the carrier knows that they have a unique skill, and can align it with the unique skills of others.

In American football, a wide receiver must move fast to get downfield and catch a pass, while an offensive lineman must move not at all in order to prevent the defense from rushing the quarterback.  If the wide receiver belittled the lineman about their lack of speed, and the lineman belittled the receiver about their inability to stop speeding freight trains (except perhaps in good-humored jest), there would be no teamwork.  If Grace is heads on a coin, Gratitude is tails – Grace and Gratitude are opposite sides of the same event.  Without Consciousness about our Trines, we do not have Gratitude for the good luck they convey to us, and without Gratitude, Grace will stop flowing.

A Grand Trine is three Trines lined up in series to circle the entire Zodiac.  It’s complete, in balance, and symmetrical.  And it demands exquisite Consciousness and constant Gratitude, or the arrogance will divert you from your Mission even more than remaining an unconscious victim to your Squares.  As Alan Watts said, your Good Karma is harder to let go of than your Bad Karma.  At least as an unconscious victim to your Squares, you’re still learning, even if you aren’t paying attention to what you’re learning.  Once you become Conscious, you’ll reframe all of your victim experiences.  When you become Conscious of the arrogance in your Trines, you gain only regret.

Three is the number of the Empress, symbolizing Love with Wisdom, or Compassion, the complement to Dominion.  If you can’t in a few thoughts describe the difference between sympathy, empathy, and compassion, consider it to be an assignment to study these differences.  They’re critically important to Presence, and Presence is where Consciousness and Identity converge, out there in that field that Rumi talked about.

So you can find a lot of Great People with Grand Crosses in their horoscopes, and a lot with Grand Trines.  Of course Great People are just victims of antique cultural models left over from the Age of Aries.  In the Age of Aries, some 4000-2000 years ago, there were true mythic Heroes, David and Hercules and Loki and Thoth and Inanna and Isis and Aphrodite and Freya.  Think about how few Great People are Conscious of the difference between their own Identity and the Archetype they represent.

The people you truly admire are more likely to be an obscure aunt, or a quietly generous storekeeper, or a friend from grade school whom you never appreciated at the time.  At least I hope so.  If the folks you admire most are Great People from the propaganda mills, I invite you to reconsider your Identity.  It could change your life in ways you’d never imagine.

Bear with me a minute more, as there’s one more concept we need…

“Orb” is the astrological term for “slop.”  When two planets form an Angle with one another like a Square or Trine, they typically form that exact Angle for only a short time.  When they do, the Angle is said to be exact or complete.  But the influence of the Angle stretches beyond the moment of completion, often far beyond.  That “slop” in time is called “Orb.”

In a birch chart, you typically look for influences within six to ten degrees (out of 360 degrees in the full circle) of Orb.  In a chart of the Current Time, you typically use one degree of Orb, or if it’s a Big Deal, maybe three degrees.  We deal mostly with charts of Current Time, and we usually use one degree of Orb.

Okay, now we can get down to the meat of the issue…

Now, the combination of a Grand Cross and a Grand Trine in the same chart is exceedingly rare.  There are certain advantages to having both in the same chart, as the good luck of the Grand Trine can compensate for the constant frustration of all the Squares, and the challenges of the Grand Cross can deflate the arrogance of the Grand Trine.  Together, their interplay can act as a fertile medium for Consciousness.  Or, you could see any number of Master Knaves from the history books, whose arrogance is matched only by their disregard for others (a product of projecting the challenges of their Squares).

So basically, it’s the ultimate in horoscopes.  Of course, every horoscope is The Ultimate to its owner, and every horoscope matches the power and subtlety of every other horoscope, but in different ways.  That’s the unique glory of astrology, that everyone is unique and equal, and everyone has their own unique blend of Power and Mystery.  But if you want to talk about the kinds of dramas that are acted out on the World Stage and in the history and herstory books and the covers of the Hot Sheets in the supermarket checkout line, look to Grand Trines and Grand Crosses.  Notta lotta subtlety there, mostly power.

When a Grand Trine and a Grand Cross align so that they share the same planet on one of their corners, that planet becomes The Star of the Whole Show.  There is probably no greater spotlight that you could shine on a planet.

For the next week anda half, that’s exactly what’s going on in the World’s horoscope, a Grand Trine and a Grand Cross, sharing a retrograde and close-to-Earth Mars as their common corner.  I’ll just give the chronology today, and follow up with interpretation as the week&ahalf wears on.

Jupiter and Pluto are within one degree of their Trine from March 7 till March 17, with the Trine exact on March 12.  This is the foundation for the whole party.

Mars lines up to Trine both of them and complete the Grand Trine, within one degree of Orb, from March 12 to March 16 for the Trine to Jupiter, and from March 12 to March 17 for the Trine to Pluto.  Both Mars-Jupiter and Mars-Pluto are exact on March 14, so Magic will be afoot Bigtime March 12-14.  Mars is retrograde, so he’ll be backing in to the alignment.

So if I get busy and neglect to write about a Mars-Jupiter-Pluto Grand Trine in the next several days, remind me!

As if this wasn’t enough, Jupiter Initiates Venus on March 13, bang in the middle of the exactitude of the Grand Trine.  The anthem for this new Venus-Jupiter cycle is “A Red Cross nurse” – talk about an abundance of Grace and Healing!  If you been lucky enough to have clear weather, you’ve been watching Venus and Jupiter converge in the evening sky.

So we also have to write about the Venus-Jupiter Cycle, and a Venus-Mars-Pluto Grand Trine with Jupiter amplifying Venus no end.  Venus as the Evening Star is Venus Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love.

Then, to top it off, Black Moon Lilith joins the Venus-Jupiter Initiation on March 12.  We don’t work much with Black Moon Lilith, we leave that pretty much up to Creedence Clearwater – no, just kidding.  Lilith is a “Bad Moon” only to the worst kinda chauvinist.  Kelley Hunter does work with Black Moon Lilith, so I usually defer to her.

That’s the Big Show, and it would be totally Grand even without the Grand Cross.

This all happens in 10 degrees of the Earth Signs, where Venus and Jupiter are shifting from the Taurus Decanate of Taurus to the Virgo Decanate of Taurus, which means it’s lightening up, not grasping so hard as Taurus usually does.  And Pluto is moving from the Capricorn Decanate of Capricorn to the Taurus Decanate of Capricorn, meaning that Pluto is digging in, getting even more ferociously tenacious than Pluto usually is.

So far Pluto’s only been sorta dabbling in Capricorn, but now it’s gonna get serious, and take no prisoners.  Pluto in Capricorn symbolizes Just Fix It, and at least as far as the World Economy is concerned, our “leaders” have been doing anything but.  The time has come to move it.  Since constructive problem-solving doesn’t seem to be in their playbooks, it may have to arrive through crisis – or since there’s so much Grace about, through the Fuhrers suddenly finding new chapters in their playbooks.

Earth Signs symbolize stuff, materiality, hardcopy Reality, the kind that the Muggles think is Real.  So the World Economy could very well be front and center.

As for the chronology of the Grand Cross…

Mars is within one degree of a Square to both of the Moon’s Nodes from March 12 to March 17, and exactly Square on March 14.  The Moon’s Nodes delineate our Mission in the lifetime, so they’re kinda important.

Mars opposes the asteroid Pallas on March 12, and is within one degree of Orb from March 11 to March 14.  Pallas of course is Pallas Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom and War, also symbolized by Venus as the Morning Star.  So we have the other, firmer pole of Venus here, the Boundary-setting pole that complements the Love with Wisdom pole.

Also involved in the Grand Cross are Juno, which symbolizes Identity (Big Surprise, eh?), and Chiron, which symbolizes Healing through Resonance, through changing the Frequency.

So if I get busy and don’t write about a Mars-Pallas-Dragon Grand Cross, with overtones of Juno and Chiron, within several days, remind me.

Now, as we’ve said before, the Moon is often the trigger for the meat of the manifestation of an astrological event or configuration.  So all those Orbs and times of exactitude could easily be superseded by the Moon, which Squares Mars on March 13.  Well, that’s right in the thick of it, aint it.  As Pogo would say, Friday the 13th falls on a Tuesday this month.  That’s about half-past 4pm PDT on March 13.  That’s a good candidate for the peak of the whole affair, and an excellent time for a ritual of Accepting Power.  If you want to influence events, it would behoove to start yer PIAVAs now, though injecting your own PIAVAs right into the maelstrom of the 13th would also be interesting.

But I think allowing the Power of that Hour to infuse into yourself, so you’re afterward Present to help Change the World, or to mop up compassionately after the Change, or to Ascend if that’s yer objective, would be where the greater power would lie.  Think of that Hour like Dr. Frankenstein throwing the switch.  It would be like Taking Personal Responsibility for the Planet.  You are She and She is you anyway, soya mayas well.  Ifya need a refresher on the difference between Responsibility and Blame, lemme know.  Nobody’s Conscious or Present when they’re in Blame.

Now, if we’re gonna Take Personal Responsibility for the Planet, we need Presence above all, and nothing inhibits Presence like being hypnotized by some dumb Archetype!  So let’s look at when the Moon crosses Juno/Identity (around 11am PDT on March 13) and its own North Node/our Mission, aka the Dragon’s Head (about 2pm PDT), since those are the Hours when our own switch is most likely to be thrown from unconscious to Conscious.  So, y’know, you might wanna spend the whole day in Meditation.

Oh, one more thing.  On March 12, Mercury goes retrograde.  Mercury’s our Observer, our ability to detach our Identity, and retrograde doesn’t mean off.  Retrograde means focused inward rather than focused outward.  All the more impetus for a big breakthrough in Consciousness.  It goes retro at the midpoint between Uranus and Vesta – the hotspot between Integrity and the Sacred.  The cards are definitely stacked in our favor here.  Eat it up!

Haidt-Ashbury

Finally, some hard scienterrific perspective about those Bastards on the other side!

http://billmoyers.com/episode/how-do-conservatives-and-liberals-see-the-world/

Don’t miss Dr. Hate’s, er, Haidt’s, TED talk as well.

He makes some fascinating points, though he fergot to mention the Polarization that characterized the first decade of the current Century, and to a lesser (thank Goodness) extent the Century as a whole (by which we mean of course the Moon-Pallas-Saturn-Uranus Grand Cross in the 1/1/2000 chart).  He also fergot to mention that Madison Avenue and the Repubs were the eagerest market for consulting on NLP methods for manipulating folks, as Lakoff and Dean reminded us (interesting trio of books, there!) back in ’04.

Break on Through to the Other Side

Yer ancestors worked their butts off for millennia to set firm boundaries to keep the Other Side from bleeding through to Over Here.  They’ve done a thorough job, and if you think of things as linear, it’s a dang shame, after such looong hard work, that the Wall is falling.  Fortunately, when we think spherically, we understand that when you go far enough in any direction, you meet yourself coming back.  So the Loss of the Veil is just a swing of the pendulum, albeit a looong pendulum.  Or so history would tell us.  Herstory would be different.  Linear Thinking (I am X and not Y, and don’t you dare try to tell me otherwise!) and Limiting Beliefs (X is great, Y is awful!) keep the Wall in place.  When you accept neither your Shadow nor your Wholeness, the Other Side is peopled by Evil.

The Moon, like any other Heavenly Body, has two Nodes, a North and a South, that Oppose one another.  The North Node symbolizes your Good Karma (X is great!), and the South Node your Bad Karma (Y is awful!).  And of course a Full Moon is also an Opposition.  That’s the Second Harmonic, the High Priestess.  Angie tells us that “this achetype serves as a reminder that we are not to sacrifice our strength for our softness, or our softness for our strength.”  Both/And, in other words.  The Second Harmonic is about Awareness.  The contrast of Opposites always invites us to remember our Wholeness.  Unless X is great and Y is awful, in which case the contrast of Opposites invites us to rage against the Other.  Of course, every time we rage against the Other, the arousal gives us the opportunity to Wake Up.

As you by now well know, when two Oppositions grace a horoscope at right angles to one another, it’s a Grand Cross.  The Grand Cross represents Tension – and Balance.  A Grand Cross in combination with X is great and Y is awful is an invitation to self-destruction, because rage against the Other becomes rage against the Self.  Well, around 3am PDT on Monday, the Full Moon makes a Grand Cross with the Moon’s Nodes.  The Full Moon, rising at dusk and setting at dawn, illuminates the darkness.  So there’s no better time than this Full Moon, Fourth Harmonic to it’s own Nodes, to camp under a Bodhi Tree.  Illumination awaits us.  Or rage.  Or rage as a wake-up call to Illumination.

Coupla other details in the Full Moon chart.

When three planets line up equidistant from one another, each one third of the way round the Zodiac from the next, it’s a Grand Trine.  The Third Harmonic is The Empress, Love with Wisdom, and a surfeit of ease is Grace.  The downside of a Grand Trine is arrogance – attributing our ease to our own prowess, rather than finding our Gratitude for the Gift from the Goddess.  The planets in the Full Moon Grand Trine are Jupiter (expansion), Mercury (awareness), and Pluto (forming a new Trance).  So here’s one key – illumination is a Gift, not an Ego-builder!  So many folks out there wanting us to be sure we know that they’re enlightened.  A sure sign they ain’t.  Be mindful for that trap – as Watts said, it’s a lot harder to transcend your Good Karma than it is to transcend your Bad Karma.  But there are loads of Grace available.

But notice that the Grand Cross and the Grand Trine don’t share any planets.  So they’re independent of one another, so Grace does not facilitate Illumination.  So we could get stuck on the rage, and miss the Grace entirely.  Or get stuck on the Grace, and miss the opportunity to own our rage.  Consider this…

“In a conflict, the first thing you do is find out who your enemy is, then listen to what he says, and then try to figure out why he is doing things.”

Of course our enemy is always a disowned part of ourself.  If you know Fritz Perls, get out a coupla chairs.  If you don’t, it’s time to find out.

The quote is from an interview with Doug Casey.  I’ve been tempted many times to link youall to stories from Casey, because he has such a clear understanding of what’s going on on the Planet, and he doesn’t mince words about it.  But he almost always throws in a few comments that makes him look like the idiot he’s claiming everyone else is.  He somehow misses that opportunity in this interview, so even though it’s long, I highly recommend it.  I’m not suggesting Doug is an example of Illumination, just that he’s a clear seer and  a clear sayer.  Who knows, maybe he’ll notice this weekend how much he disparages his mirror.

When a planet sits at a point one Sixth of the circle from one end of an Opposition and one Third of a circle from the other end, it’s a key to defusing the tension inherent in an Opposition.  When the Opposition is half of a Grand Cross, the charmed Sixth Harmonic-Third Harmonic planet is the key that opens the whole Cross.  A Grand Cross, recall, is four Fourth-Harmonic angles back to back, and the Fourth Harmonic is Mastery through Challenge.  The Sixth-Third planet, should you choose to pay attention to it, is like Aikido – it allows you to use the energy of your tension to master the challenge.  So in the Full Moon chart, a pair of planets sit in this sweet spot between the Moon’s Nodes.

So that planet pair is a key to effortlessly transforming both our Good Karma and our Bad Karma.  Which planets?  Well, whaddaya know – our old friend JUNO!  I-dentity!  And who joins her?  Why, Saturn!  Concentrated Focus on our Identity!  A long time ago, a friend of mine read a book by Wei Wu Wei, I think it was.  And as a result of the book, for a long time my friend went around referring to himself, not as I or me, but as he or him.  That’d be a good practice for the weekend; it could facilitate some third-party awareness of who you’ve been imagining yourself to be.  Here’s a good quote from Wei Wu Wei…

Why are you unhappy?

Because 99.9 per cent

Of everything you think,

And of everything you do,

Is for yourself —

And there isn’t one.

The Big Jade Boulders in Jade Cove on the Big Sur Coast were so numinous to visitors, that they eventually took all of them home, every one of them.  So Jade Cove doesn’t have any Big Jade Boulders anymore.  Talk about an Identity Crisis!  Then again, if you live in San Luis Obispo, Big Sur isn’t sur at all, it’s norte!  So you ain’t the only one with Identity issues.  The term Jade is applied to a number of different rocks, but the “real” Jade (it’s a Common Name, and the rules of Common Naming is that anybody can call anything anything they want) is Nephrite, which is really a form of Actinolite, or Calcium Magnesium Iron Inosilicate.  It’s famous worldwide, throughout history and herstory both, for its grounding and healing properties.  Which it does without a unique and reliable name or a fixed Identity.

Oh Krap, Not Identity Again!

As Bobby Z said when he was stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues again,

What does it take, to get out of going through all this twice?

Lest we forget, we’re still in the throes of this big Identity thing.  Lotsa folks lamenting how their empathy skills are giving them big headaches.  Well, the natural state of the Universe is Union.  Separation is the aberration, the Big Experiment that Judeo-Christianity chronicles, and that Western Civilization flaunts most divisively here at the End of the Experiment.  This corner of the Universe is in the middle of a huge transition, and lotsa humans are in heavy Resistance, and Resistance is painful, so Union can feel pretty awful these days.  But as above, so below; it’s the Resistance that’s painful, even – no, especially – Resistance to pain.  Nothing changes till we accept it exactly as it is.

The illusion is our Individual Ego, our perceived Identity as an independent actor, rather than an Identity as a small part of a larger Whole.  Chinese culture is waxing in these End Times because they know themselves to be part of a larger Whole.  We so treasure our Individual Ego that we can’t allow ourselves to melt into the Whole, simply because it feels like Death.  And it is Death, Ego Death, the only Death there is.  All else is just transformation.  The lament, “Arrrggghhh, I am dying!” is never about dying, it’s about I.  Western culture is so brainwashed into it’s belief that We Are Not All One that few people in it have the perspective to understand what that means.

The lament, “Arrrggghhh, I am dying!” is never about dying, it’s about I.

In fact, the Individual Ego does carry through from lifetime to lifetime, just not in the form that we expect it to, because we don’t see ourselves as a Whole, we see ourselves as mirrored by segments of our perceptions.  Seth advised that if we want to know who we really are, we can just play the movie of our life history, with all of it’s successes and frustrations and joys and dramas and traumas.  Of course we then have to take Responsibility for that, and few folks here know the difference between Responsibility (willingness to Accept what is in the present, and Respond so as to change the future when appropriate) and Blame (willingness to feel Guilt about the past).  We all know how the Individual Ego carries from lifetime to lifetime – Karma – but we in the West misinterpret Karma to imply retribution (Blame) rather than what it is, simply inertia.

How many of us actually Identify with our Karma, rather than see it as something pressing on us from the outside?  Yet that’s precisely how we come to Accept it exactly as it is, in order to create the field where Change is possible.  As long as our Karma is external to “us,” we deny the immortality of the Individual Ego and the impossibility of Death.  But of course, were we to actually understand the immortality of the Individual Ego, we would see how it’s not Individual at all, but simply one thread in a grander fabric, a thread of colors that make little sense when pulled out of it’s tapestry.  Except in the narrow mind, it’s always Both/And.  What we deny we push into the Unconscious, and the Unconscious is a quantum field.  It has no firm boundaries, and no fixed conclusions.  Like the Zero Point Field, it is the home of unlimited potential.  What a place!  If we could stand to live there.

There is Life after (Ego) Death, be sure of it.  How to recognize Ego Death, so we can accept it and celebrate it as the Liberation that it is?  Easy, it feels like we’re dying, or it feels like we’d rather die than go through that again.  When you experience those feelings, shift your Identification.  Be neither the perp nor the victim in that drama, be an observer.  If you aren’t a disinterested observer, tap out your engagement.  If that doesn’t work, tap it out again, and if that doesn’t work tap it out again.  And again.  We aren’t talking about drinking water here, we’re talking about limiting beliefs we’ve held for many lifetimes.  We’re highly identified with them, or they wouldn’t be giving us fits.  Don’t expect them to let go of us easily.  But on the other hand, don’t be surprised when they do let go of us – it’s nothing but our own fear of the Void that keeps us grasping them.  Be Curious, and expect Miracles.

Like Moths, or Angels with our Wings frozen, the mineral is Wollastonite, a Calcium Inosilicate.  We needed an Inosilicate, because in the Inosilicates the SiO4 Silicate ions are bound together as pairs, symbolizing our Conscious Identity and our Shadow or Mirror Self.  It’s not just that We Are All One in the sense that we are in this together, it’s that We Are All One in the sense that we are infinite, we encompass the Universe – but for practical reasons, we screen most of ourselves out, and pretend we are infinitesimally smaller than we really are.  So The Rest of Us, that plethora of Qualities and Quantities we call the Universe, is the hidden member of our ionic pair, complementing the little piece we’ve broken off to focus our Individual Identity.  Yet from the perspective of the Individual Ego, the Universe half often looks smaller than the Us half.

Wollastonite illustrates how we get trapped by making a habit of our focus and creating the inertia which becomes Karma, and get, literally, ossified, turned to bone, by the Calcium.  It’s neither good nor bad, it’s just the nature of This Reality.  As Alan Watts said, it’s a lot more difficult to clear our “Good” Karma than it is to clear our “Bad” Karma.  Identity is always sticky, like the Briar Patch.  Wollastonite also perfectly illustrates the consequence of accepting and clearing our Karma – like Br’er Rabbit, we get our wings back!

Do Gophers Have Weather?

Lest we forget it’s Both/And…

We gotta do both – be realistic about what’s happening on the Planet, and stay focused on what we’d rather see happening on the Planet.

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2011/8/3_Gerald_Celente.html

http://abcnews.go.com/US/riot-fear-uk-style-destruction-happen-america/story?id=14278479

You may need to tap on any unpleasant reactions you have to current events, and to other people’s potentially hysterical reactions to current events.

Lilies were created when Hercules spilt Juno’s Milk.  The Grand Cross is a good symbol for Both/And, or even more than that.

Our Old Friend Juno

Remember Juno, that symbolizes Identity?  We did a whole lotta Identity work a while back.  Identity’s more complicated than just Who Do You Think You Are?  Consciousness involves a lot more than just thinking, and of course Consciousness is just the “tip of the iceberg.”  I could weave alotta complex intellectualizations, but that’s not at all the point.  Just as Einstein said that you can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that postulated the problem, You can’t stretch into a new way of being with the same Identity that has been trying to run your life.

If you still haven’t been willing to read Stephen Levine’s Who Dies?, at least buy a copy, or check one out from your local library, or open a copy at a bookstore if there still is one near you, and just read a page or two at random.  Amazoo will sellya a used copy for $4, and that includes shipping.  If you can get hold of a copy for your nightstand or coffee table or breakfast nook, where you can open it and read a random page or two at random intervals, that’s enough to shift you.

The July 31 New Moon (beginnings) coincided with the beginning of Day 5.  After Day 5 (which ends August 17) there’s only two more Nights and two more Days to go on the Mayan Callemander, so time is running low.  You probably well know by now that a New Moon chart applies to the following four weeks, and in the July 31 New Moon chart, Juno was Opposing Uranus, which of course means it was Squaring Pluto.  Oppositions are about Awareness, and Uranus represents our Soul Chord, and as you recall Uranus recently did a huge new Century-Plus-Scale Download, so the opportunity here is to Leap forward many loops on the board without having to pass Go.  Squares are about gaining wisdom through experience, and Pluto represents Trance(re)Formation, expanding the opportunity exponentially.

The reason we bring this up now, is cuz that Juno-Uranus-Pluto T-Square is becoming “exact” – it was there at the New Moon, but it was a bit loose still, and now it’s tightening up.  In general, when affairs in your life don’t flow smoothly, it’s a sign that it’s time to switch to a new Identity, cuz your old Identity is tripping over the furniture in a Reality that was rearranged while you were napping.  You don’t want to hear that as a judgement, cuz here at the End-O’Days, we need alotta naps, and Reality thinks it’s a kaleidoscope, so being gentle and loving with ourself is first priority.  But that’s always a good way to respond to Confusion and Klutzhood, by PIAVAing (Pray or Intend or Ask or Visualize or Affirm) a new Identity that better matches the wallpaper.

Juno exactly Opposes Uranus in the early morning (PDT) on August 10, and exactly Squares Pluto in the morning (PDT) on August 13.  But, recall, we mentioned earlier that Mars gets involved with Uranus-Pluto around August 9-10.  Well, Mars did in fact complete the Grand Cross at the Day 5 New Moon.  A Grand Cross is four planets equally spaced around the Zodiac, making four Squares.  That actually gives us some stability, cuz the Juno-Uranus-Pluto T-Square, simply because it’s a T-Square, is inherently unstable.  A T-Square is three-fourths of a Grand Cross.  There is no “solution” to a T-Square, simply because a T-Square is not a “problem.”  But it definitely, always, feels like a problem!  Life is messy, and if we’re cursed with a need for Order, a T-Square can get terribly inconvenient.  While the Grand Cross asks for constant adjustments, at least it’s in balance.

So the Day 5 New Moon was actually a Mars-Juno-Uranus-Pluto Grand-Cross Day-5 New Moon.  Mars represents physical Energy, so it’ll be amplifying any dissonance between our current or Old Identity and the New Reality that’s unfolding around us and within us.  Separation is an illusion, a mass Trance.  We are, actually, All One.  Of course it’s Both/And, it’s always Both/And.  But when you ask What’s the Energy rather than What’s the Matter, there are no hard and fast boundaries.  As Above, So Below.  Those cliches, We Be All One, As Above So Below, and for that matter, All There Is Is Now, aren’t really cliches.  They’re the fundamental properties of the Universe that you spend much of your waking hours in.  The rest is mostly Trances of various kinds.

Mars exactly Opposes Uranus around 10am PDT on August 9, and exactly Squares Pluto around 10am PDT on August 10.  The Moon gets all tangled up in all this (the Moon is often the “actuator” for larger Cosmic Energies) from about 9-11pm PDT on August 9.  At any of the times we list, and before the times, the Energies could be enhanced, or not.  When we make opportunities into problems, we can get impaled on decisions.  For instance, suppose our Self-Rejection comes up on August 9.  Well, if it does, we have the option of responding as we do in Meditation – Oh, there’s my Self-Rejection again.  Hi!  Say Hi to Mom for me!  Or we could respond by allowing our Identity to slip into Self-Rejection – What a Rotten Apple Am I!

So let’s say we were about to do something really fun or really important, and we slipped into RottenAppleHood, and decided that we can’t do that.  Well, that decision will carry negative Mars-Uranus(-Juno-Pluto) Energy into the future.  Our Emotional Holding, which has the same effect in the body as Heavy Metals, got there through decisions like that.   If we responded with neutrality (Oh, Hi!), then the Energy will be finished by tomorrow morning, and we can go about our fun and important business unhindered.

The most useful thing I’ve found over the last several days, is that pushing through with volition is not very effective, compared to PIAVAing the Great Spirit (or God, The Universe, The Unconscious, The Goddess, or whatever name you usually address Her by) for what you want to accomplish.  So I’m PIAVAing the Great Spirit for help remembering to always PIAVA Her.

The magically glimmering fellow at the beginning of this contribution, the one that looks like a Wizard throwing his cloak across his chest, is a Goshenite crystal – essentially, a colorless Emerald.  The mineral name is Beryl, because it’s Beryllium Aluminum Cyclosilicate.  The Cyclosilicates are among the hardest minerals, cuz their Silicon atoms form tight rings, so they make good Gems.  Beryllium is of course element number 4 – only Hydrogen, Helium, and Lithium are lighter than Beryllium.  You know why the Angels can fly, eh?  Cuz they take themselves lightly.  The Beryls contribute that neutrality for us.  When mixed into Uranium, Beryllium improves thermal conductivity, making nucular fuel safer, more efficient, and longer lasting, cuz more heat gets to the turbine, and doesn’t build up to the meltdown stage.

When Beryl is relatively pure, you get Goshenite (clear) or Heliodor (yellow or yellow-green).  With a touch or Manganese, the resulting pink Beryl is called Morganite.  Add a bit of Iron, and Aquamarine (blue) results.  Mix in a little Chromium with the Iron, and you’re graced with an Emerald (green).

Day 4

Wow, musta been some Eclipse, eh?  More folks checked in than have checked in since Mars crossed Uranus in early April.

It’s a busy week.  Long Day today, frinstance, in the North, and Short Day in the South.  Sun-Turn-Around Day.  I celebrated with ten yards of primo topsoil.  Then Day 4 of the Callemander begins on Friday.  It’s easy to tell it’s the last few days of the Big Release Opportunity that Night 3 brings – lotsa stories from folks about reliving various emotional events from earlier in their current life, and about connecting with threads from the Other Side of the Veil.  Then lotsa threads falling in from the Future, from the likes of Hank Wesselman and John Perkins.  Hank talks about

“The Ancestral Grand Plan—exploring the path our ancestors set in motion millennia ago and how the Plan is playing out across the world today,”

and John tells how

“We see how countries all over the world are now rejecting tyranny.  As we stand with them, we must also demand that in our own country our leaders will hearken to the call for a new economy based on doing well by all people – workers, consumers, and those who do not have jobs or food on their tables.  The time for greed and excessive materialism has passed.“

while Bloomberg tells us that 46 out of 58 economists think that The Ben Bernank will have to keep pouring cash into the gash in the Old System after June 30.  The standard line is something like, If you laid all the economists in the World end to end, they still wouldn’t agree, so 46 outa 58 is pretty good.  Not that their record of prediction is any better than the weatherfolk.

In a clamshell, the Solstice chart, which visualizes the three months and (in a more general way) the year to follow, is a doozy.  Two Grand Crosses and a Grand Trine – couldn’t get much noisier, so we can probably expect more of the same going forward, as we been enduring in the recent past.

The Solstice Sun completes the Saturn-Pluto-Uranus T-Square that we spoke of recently, making it into a Grand Cross.  The Square (Fourth Harmonic), recall, is about Mastery through Challenge, the T-Square (two squares joined at the hip) about Tolerating Imperfection and “Learning Experiences,” and the Grand Cross (four squares all joined at the ends) about Finesse.  The Grand Cross gives us four Challenges, but they’re mutually complementary, so we can juggle them effectively.

The first Grand Cross connects the Sun (the essence of who we are – which is to say, Energy) with Saturn (focus, priorities), Pluto (trance formation, inevitability), and Uranus (remember that New Soul Download?).  The Grand Trine (Third Harmonic, Grace) joins Saturn (focus, priorities) with Venus (self-respect, eschewing self-abandonment) and Pallas (boundaries).

That all plays right into what Hank and John are talking about, along with a healthy dose of reliving various emotional events – we just gotta relive them till we can embrace them without rue or discomfort.  Didja notice how quickly they moved on?  Did that surprise ya?  That’s the nature of the process – we re-experience our traumadramas till they’re routine, and each time we re-experience them they get easier and easier.  Tapping, of course, helps.

The second Grand Cross connects both of the Moon’s Nodes (also called The Dragon, or the very symbol of Spiritual Fire burning away Emotional Dross – through re-experiencing of course) with Juno (guess what – Identity!  Ta-Da!) and Ceres (Sustainability or Sustenance).  Ifya don’t know Dragon well, you gotta take the time to read Ursula Leguin’s Earthsea Trilogy – all six of them.  Number six is the meat, but you won’t get nearly as many of the teaching threads unless you start with number one.  It’s not a chore, you won’t be able to put them down.  And of course, you know Juno, you also gotta read Stephen’s Who Dies?

Here’s the scoop on the Solstice Sun.

Eudialyte is the Way-Shower that leads us cleanly between Dimensions.  Ya gotta be clean to travel between Dimensions, cuz when ya try to carry baggage, the portal will rip yer arm off.  Energy passes through effortlessly, but not Matter.  Ursula’ll teach you all about that, and you’ll enjoy it to pieces.  The chemistry is Sodium Calcium Cerium Iron Manganese Yttrium Zirconium Cyclosilicate Hydroxide Chloride – !  I won’t even try to decipher all that!

Big Fat Full Moon

Moonstone (Orthoclase Feldspar, Potassium Aluminium Tektosilicate) mirrors Emotion back to you – call it the tapping stone.  The hardest Emotions to release are those that aren’t “our own,” but that we adopted from someone else – if you don’t have permission to set a good boundary, and someone dumps on you, the tradition is to “kick the Dog.”  So if yer the Dog, and somebody kicks you for no apparent reason, whaddaya gonna do, bite ’em?  Well, if it’s the hand the feeds ya, yer probably gonna chase the Cat.  That’s what’s meant by Emotions that aren’t “our own.”  Most of us grew up in households with some degree of Dog-kicking, or worse.  Since tapping wasn’t “discovered” yet, and neither were the more concerted methods for healing from acute or chronic abuse, few of us knew how to prevent the scourge from traveling down the seven-generation road.

Saturday’s Big Fat Full Moon occurs when the Moon in its elliptical orbit is closest to Earth, so it’ll look a lot bigger than usual.  Full Moons, of course, rise at sunset and set at sunrise, and there’s an optical trick that makes Moons look even bigger when they’re on the horizon.  We’re lucky this Full Moon didn’t fall on Thursday.

When you’re having difficulty setting a good boundary with someone in the present moment, either because it’s politically inexpedient or because they’re too fat-headed to “get it,” sometimes it works to set a psychic boundary.  It’s actually a good practice, since it’s our kicked-Dog wounds that stop us from having good psychic boundaries in the first place, and by practicing we can develop better Energy habits.  You set up a psychic boundary by imagining a wardrobe mirror between you and the person who’s invading your space, facing them.  It just mirrors their Energy back to them, and keeps it out of your own field, so yer able to just be yerself more.  Sometimes you need to make the mirror bigger, since particularly unconscious folks will just “come around to the back door.”

While we’re done with the Solstice Eclipse Grand Cross, and all the Identity work it entailed, we aren’t done with our Identity work, as this Full Moon sets up another, temporary, Grand Cross, and more Identity homework, and especially Boundary work.  The global New Paradigm is starting to congeal, and this helps, but a good deal of the work falls on our own shoulders.

It’s actually hard work, holding the mirror, it takes concentration and focus.  When it works, you can feel a flush of peace inside yourself after a minute or two of holding the mirror.  Once you feel that, you know you’re on the right track.  Then you inevitably relax, and of course they invade again as soon as they can – they’re hungry, and they’re feeding on your Energy.  So sometimes you have to keep at it, hold the mirror up again in yer mind’s eye, make it bigger if necessary, hold it a bit longer.  Once you relax, you’re relaxing back into your accustomed Victim space, and many of our Victim spaces are sooo comfortable, because that was the only space that was safe for us as kids.  So it’s actually excellent Energetic practice to wake yourself into being conscious of the wound in your Aura, and getting in the habit of keeping it full of your own Energy, so there’s no vacuum to suck in the other bloke’s Bully Energy.

If instead of a flush of internal peace, you encounter Guilt, then you absolutely know you’re on the right track, but it’s a different track.  Keep holding the mirror as best you can, while you locate the Guilt in your body, and send Love into it.  Love is soft and warm, fear is hard and cold.  You can warm the area with your hand, you can speak to it softly.  You not only have a hole in yer Aura, but you believe you’re sposta! Take time out, make yourself as safe as you can (if nothing else, five minutes in the bathroom), focus on the present moment, and work at being loving and gentle with your Guilt.  Tap it out, but also love it to death.  It served you well, keeping you safe when it was the best tool you had.  You don’t need it any more, but you want to acknowledge it with great gratitude as you send it on to its next assignment.  Then back to your mirroring.  You may need to do this many times.

If you’re seriously, or persistently, angry at or scared of someone, and mirroring doesn’t give you that few seconds of peace inside, no matter how diligently you mirror them, they they’re probably standing in for someone in your personal history.  Who’s the first person that comes into your mind?  Death is not real, any more than Matter is real.  It’s Energy that’s real.  Yes, Energy and Matter are interchangeable (with some effort), so Matter is certainly real in that sense, but all Matter is temporary, only held in place by trance.  Energy is ever-changeable, like it’s primary metaphor Weather, but it’s more persistent than Matter.  So sure, the person who unconsciously tormented you as a child may be long since “dead,” but that doesn’t mean the constellation of Energy that comprised “them” is gone.

You can conjure them up in yer mind’s eye with no effort whatsoever.  So mirror them, mirror that constellation of Energy that used to be “them,” and see if you find a few seconds of peace.  If it feels rude to mirror the dead, that’s because it is, but tough shit, this is important and life-changing work.  You can go back to Love and Forgiveness, more completely, once your Aura is repaired.  If no moment of peace, then take the second person, living or “dead,” that comes to mind, and mirror them.  The folks who told us they’d kill us – or kill someone even more important to us – if we ever told anybody, those folks can be deeply hidden from us, back in the dark recesses, with multiple layers of disguise.  If you’re thinking, that’s not me, think again.  Chronic abuse can be as deadly as acute abuse – if you were told that you’d “never amount to anything” enough times, it can create a psychic wound as large as any major acute event.

Of course you’re tapping all the while, right?  Emotion clouds your intuition, and any reduction in Emotion allows you to see more clearly.  Now, have you remembered Stephen Levine’s perspective, that it’s not our Emotion, it’s the Emotion?  Emotion is a field, and strong Emotions, particularly Emotions that don’t have a permitted avenue for release, can create a field strong enough to move physical objects.  So if you can reduce the intensity of any “negative” Emotion by tapping, you’re healing the Planet.  Never do nothing because you can’t do enough, as Margaret Mead put it.  Negative Emotions have their legit role, but that’s straightforward – if you’re angry with someone, you set a boundary, if you’re scared you protect yourself, if you’re sad you embrace yourself, if you’re in despair you give yourself empathy.  It’s when the straightforward process doesn’t work that we need to resort to magic.

So, we’re about to enter a coupla days with the Moon in perogee and Full, opposite Uranus and square to it’s own Nodes but with trines to Pallas-Vesta and Ceres-Chiron-Neptune, while Mars opposes Juno, and Mercury-Jupiter opposes Saturn.  A mouthful, eh?  What’s it mean?

Well, we’ve been talking about that since the Moonstone.  The Mars-Juno thing is dangerous.  We could be vigorously defending Identities that don’t really belong to us any longer.  It makes a weak trine to Vesta, the Sacred, so the key question is, Am I willing to die for this? If the answer is just No, I’m just pissed off!, then tap it out, mirror your antagonist(s), work on your Boundaries, and do something fun.  If the answer is Yes!! then tap it out, mirror your antagonist(s), work on your Boundaries, and visualize your own Death.  Of course it’s “only” an Ego Death, so it only feels like you’re dying, but that’s what a regression to a Past Death is all about, so go for it.  In most cases, when you martyr yourself, you’re the only one that suffers, so be mindful of the subtle difference between Give me Liberty or Give me Death and I’ll show you, you Bastard!

The Ceres-Chiron-Neptune involvement brings the global New Paradigm into alignment with our New Soul Download, so yes, many folks are preparing to become Martyrs.  Nobody is a Martyr before their physical Death, they’re only fighting for something they passionately believe in.  Or because they don’t have anything to lose.  Nobody martyrs themself, they only give themselves an Oscar for acting out the Ultimate Victim.  When you fight to the Death for something you passionately believe in, you’re most likely to become only fertilizer.  And these days, nobody fights to the Death anyway, they only stand in front of a bullet.

Clarity is important here.  We’ve been letting go of, or re-leasing, Past Deaths for several months now, but there are always more.  When you’re done with yours, you can help others with theirs.  The central issues are (1) setting good Boundaries to make space for our New Soul Download, our New Self that we hardly know yet, that’s still barely ghosting into Form – Uranus is only half a degree into Aries, only 1/720th of the way on it’s journey.  In the metaphor of a 72-year lifetime, that would make our New Soul Download the equivalent of a 5-week-old babe.  Notta lotta self-awareness at 5 weeks – I don’t think we even know that we have arms and legs yet.  It’s not about defending anything except empty space!  Everything else is still Potential.  So there’s a good chance you and the World are both better off with Ego Death than with Martyrdom.

And (2) aligning our Karma with the global New Paradigm.  The global New Paradigm is just over a year old, out of a 65-year span.  It’s crawling around, impatient, easily distracted, beginning to verbalize, just beginning to explore the limits of Emotion, and indefatigable.  It’s easy to mistake a one-year-old for a “blank slate” that we need to manipulate into our own image, but a dangerous mistake to make, because the ultimate pushback will be severe.  Imagine how effective you’d have been preaching against consumerism in 1947.  If we look at attitudes and dates, and consider that the 60s are starting to get permanent, the youth of Egypt and the Unions of Wisconsin look more like a New Paradigm than the stern, uncompromising reactionaries that are funded by the Koch Brothers and the US Defense Department and stolen oil.

The Mercury-Jupiter-Saturn thing means we’re exploring new ground, intellectually and personally, while we’re bringing better definition into our social lives.  With our own personal growth, it’s about Ooh, isn’t this interesting!! With our social interactions it’s more like, Hmm, does this grow corn?

The Full Moon itself is around 11am PDT on Saturday, but the Mars-Juno doesn’t complete until closer to 4pm.  Stay mindful.

 

 

Uranus in Aries

[Natrochalcite (Hydrated Sodium Copper Sulfate Hydroxide, the brighter green microcrystals) on Khronkite (Hydrated Sodium Copper Sulfate, the forest green base); we provide the chemical formulas so you can relate the Stone’s vibration to how the individual chemicals operate in your body.  For instance, Sodium will raise your blood pressure, making you more alert.  Copper will strengthen your bones, allowing you to stand taller, and preserve your myelin, maintaining your sensuality.  Sulfur adds flexibility and Oxygen (Sulfate is one Sulfur with four Oxygen) provides power.  A great source for information is The World’s Healthiest Foods.  And Water (hydrated) is the Mother Fluid which bathes our connective tissue and carries our instincts and intuitions from our Portals-to-the-Universe to The-Rest-of-Us.  So channeling this Stone may make learning, and operating on that learning, easier, more effective, and more fun.  And then there’s the interaction terms (for instance, Copper Sulfate was the Blue Vitriol of Alchemy, which can powerfully dissolve Identity).  Green, of course, triggers Heart Energy – compassion is essential for self-transformation.  Not that the Stone was chosen analytically; it was chosen intuitively, the above is after-the-fact.  It pays to court both the Intuitive and the Analytical; the combination enhances your Bullshit Meter, which is important these days.]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As we’ve said we’re no longer under the influence of the Solstice Eclipse Grand Cross between Jupiter-Uranus, Juno, and Pluto-Dragon, which has for the last several months been providing us with an enormous opportunity to release impediments to our assisting the Ascension of the Planet.

To review.  Last June, Jupiter (the Amplifier) conjoined Uranus (our individual Soul Chord) bang on the Cusp of Aries (brand new beginnings, new infusions of Spirit).  Either Uranus entering Aries, or Jupiter conjoining Uranus, implies for us as individuals a major New Download from our Soul Chord, or, should we choose to accept it, a revised Mission on the Planet.  Well, as is their wont, both Jupiter and Uranus subsequently backed up into Pisces – which meant that they were seeking out any unfinished business to process, so they could be sure that our Earthly Vehicles were as ready as possible for the New Download.

To assist further in this Eon-scale clearing process, around about the time of the Eclipse that occurred near the December Solstice, the Grand Cross came into focus, and hung around until early March.  The Grand Cross had Jupiter-Uranus on one corner, and Juno on the opposite corner.  Juno represents our Unconscious Identities, most of which we would have adopted through the inertia of prior lifetimes.  Oppositions are about Awareness, so it would be hard to find a more effective consciousness-building process than mirroring our New Soul Chord Download with our Unconscious Identities.  The disparities would glare!

Then, to top it off, the other two corners of the Grand Cross comprised the Moon’s Nodes, which are all about past (South Node) and future (North Node) lives.  So not only would the inadequacies of our Unconscious Identities be illuminated, we’d even have ready access to the traumadramas that attached us to them!  Now, put Pluto on the North Node – Pluto which represents that which is unavoidable but transformable – and you have Pluto pulling us inexorably toward where we gotta go.  You see how readily the folks in North Africa and Wisconsin responded.  Now, what about the rest of us? Where is it that we gotta go?  Or is our inertia too great?

Jupiter moved on into Aries “for good” (that is, till it comes back around in 12 years) on January 22, so since then our lives have been speeding ahead, leaving us still struggling to release our Old Identities, even while we’re asked to confront New Realities.  This is all quite on the personal level, so whatever planetary effects are occurring, are just aggregations of the personal.  (Of course, the Planet is undergoing it’s own New Download, as we’ve been stressing for several years – Chiron-Neptune, or Replacing Despair with Miracles.)  So now, finally, Uranus also moves into Aries “for good” (ie, till the next Cycle begins 84 years out), so our Soul begins to sorta catch up with the more tangible aspects of our life.

That’s the astro-picture.  Here’s a very useful view from off-planet…

http://www.matthewbooks.com/mm/anmviewer.asp?a=131&z=2

Here’s an excerpt:

“22.  Because there is no more time to waste in those respects of development and heeding, you will welcome knowing that in the higher vibrations Earth has reached in her ascension course, discernment is easier to master and intuition is stronger. We mention as well that if you can obtain monatomic gold, it will help to enhance your clarity”

And here’s an anonymous comment…

“I have been a bit depressed reading some of your columns on WordPress, and not always finishing them, because I didn’t want to worry more about the world situation. I have been working so hard on positive visualization, and my positivity is often fragile!”

Yes, yes, yes, the Positive Visualization is essential, probably the most effective and important work we can do right now.  But it’s not the whole story.  Without actively working to detach from the Unconscious Identities that intrude into our Consciousness and make our Positivity so fragile, we’re simply outnumbered.

For all of us, Consciousness is just a tip of an iceberg.  “Our” Unconscious, and “The” Unconscious, are so vast, that We As Conscious Beings have little hope to find the levers of healthy control.  To Freud, the “Subconscious” was a dark, dirty dungeon where we hid our most shameful secrets, but to Jung, the “Unconscious” was a daylight basement with the windows papered over, where our True Mission, our Soul Chord, lived.  Jung postulated three overlapping layers to the Unconscious – the Personal Unconscious, which is ours alone (which we correlate to Uranus); the Cultural Unconscious, which contains the currents that carry the evolution of our Families and Tribes and other Collectives that we are joined to (which we interpret Neptune to connect to); and the Universal Unconscious, which sweeps the Planet in this direction or that (Pluto).

We’ve talked at length about how futile it is to resist the movements of Pluto, which we’ve compared to a River – how easy it is to drift with the current, and steer toward one bank or another when we hear the roar of impending rapids or cataracts, and how much hard work it is to labor upstream.  It’s the same with our Monolithic Unconscious, for to each of us as individuals, the three “levels” of the Unconscious are arbitrary boundaries, and we as individuals constantly skate atop a Megalithic Edifice of personal, cultural, and universal urges and directions and commands.  Each intrusion from our Unconscious, each lurch toward fear or anger or discouragement or grief, is a message that part of the Megalith is ready to boil over into Consciousness.

Jose Silva notwithstanding, if we are able to “program” our Un- or Sub-conscious so that it facilitates our Conscious Desires, it’s not because “we” control “it.”  It’s because “we” are able to negotiate win-win with “it.”  If you want to have any Power over the World, start by re-adjusting your sense of who “you” are, to include your Megalithic Unconscious, so that the intrusions are yours.  They come from deeper layers of you, not from outside of you.  In The Nature of Personal Reality, Seth describes exactly how to discover who all of this you is: you simply take responsibility for all of your personal history.

[Zinc modulates Copper in the body.  So if you start to feel painfully lost, contemplate Sphalerite (Zinc Sulfate, below) for a few minutes, then once you get grounded again, return to the Natrochalcite.]

When you take responsibility for all of your personal history, you abandon the Victim perspective, and move into being able to respond to everything in your Life.  Abandoning the Victim perspective does NOT mean you Blame someone else rather than yourself for whatever you disliked.  It means abandoning Blame entirely.  That’s not easy to do, abandoning Blame is like learning a foreign language.  We’re immersed in it.  It means, rather than thinking, They did that to me and I didn’t like it, you train yourself to think, I didn’t like that, and I’m not sure how I’ll do it yet, but I’m going to change it.  Adding …for the highest good of all, or …or something like that, might be useful.  You don’t do it all at once, that would be overwhelming.  You respond as intrusions and disruptions arise.

That’s where tapping is so incredibly valuable.  Intrusions and disruptions of Emotional material can easily overwhelm us, and tie us up for decades.  They cause us to create new Limiting Beliefs which tighten the noose around our Life and narrow our Scope.  And intrusions from the Unconscious are nothing if not Emotional.  Tapping does not diminish the motivating and navigating powers of Emotion; it diminishes the overwhelm that Emotion can create.  The power of the Emotion to guide us and inspire us remain, but now they are no longer barriers, they are facilitators.  Intrusions need to be celebrated, they are the beginnings of New Life.  Tapping them out expands us into our New Soul Essence.  Then we can Visualize Positivity, and do it with Power rather than Fragility.