Happy Yew Near

Well, I’d love to be able to argue with this perspective:

http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2010/12/29_Gerald_Celente.html .

The January 4 partial Solar Eclipse is only the 11th of 72 eclipses in its series (which goes by the name “Saros 151“).  Partial eclipses occur when an eclipse series is growing, and when it is fading; total eclipses occur in the middle of a series.  This series is still growing.  The initial eclipse in this series was August 14, 1776, a coupla weeks after the American colonies ratified the Declaration of Independence, and a coupla weeks before the first battle of the American “Revolution,” when the British routed George Washington’s army in Brooklyn.  Celente’s from the Bronx, on the other side of the East River.

The January 4 eclipse is at 14 Capricorn, “An ancient bas-relief carved in granite remains a witness to a long-forgotten culture.”  We’ll dissect the chart this weekend, but in the interim, we can see that there’s a lot more going on here than meets the eye at first glance.  The Solstice Eclipse was 48th in its series (Saros 125), deep into the total center of its series, but several eclipses past its culmination, which occurred in August 1812.  Oh my, 1812 – Napoleon was getting his comeuppance in Moscow and Madrid, not to mention a war between the US and Canada.  Saros 125 began in 1163.  The Christians and the Muslims and the Egyptians were taking turns “ruling” Egypt in 1163, including a very short resurrection of a very long-forgotten culture. 1163 is the year that the Catholics declared the Cathars heretical and ordered them all put to death.

Sounds kinda bleak, but remember we’re talking about HisStory, and he loves to play with guns.  HerStory would tell a different tale, if he hadn’t burned it at the stake.  The Solstice Eclipse fell into the 30th degree of Gemini, or A parade of bathing beauties before large beach crowds., but that version sounds more like HisStory too.  Hmmm, Napoleon, the Crusades, the Cathars, the War of Independence, Fascism, and Bathing Beauties – lotsa tales of subjugation and rebellion.

G. Clemente refers to the (Northern) Winter Solstice of 2012 as the end of the Calendar, but in Calleman’s version, it’s October 2011.  If Clemente’s predictions leave you feeling subjugated, listen again to the first few minutes – Trend #1 is Awakening.  Now, in the astrology I’ve been practicing for the last forty years (which is of course only one perspective out of many), 2012 is primarily about one event – the Fourth-Harmonic meeting of Uranus and Pluto in June 2012, which we’ve been referring to as “the 60s become permanent.”  Rudhyar’s thesis is that an Energy which is born at a Conjunction, becomes irresistible when it reaches its waxing Fourth Harmonic.

Pluto and Uranus are both planets that have their theater of operation in the Unconscious, and the impetus they encourage is a compulsion toward integrity.  When you interpret that intellectually, rather than holistically, it looks like ideological consistency – the root of polarization.  Throw Emotion into the mix as a servant of Intellect, and you get the kind of “revolution” that Clemente suggests.  But it’s not the only option.  All we really need is a dose of Both/And, and we can both have and express whatever feelings and thoughts we like.  Gosh, we might even respond to one another with Curiosity!  Add a little compassion, and we could even graduate to Win-Win, perish the thought!

There was a whole buncha polarization in the 60s, as folks believed they were struggling over Vietnam.  You can see Awakening operating already – Vietnam was about Colonialism disguised as Patriotism.  Now it’s obvious that we’ve been Colonized by Wall Street, and the patina of Patriotism that covers Homeland Security is rapidly losing its sheen.  In the 60s it was “Don’t trust anyone over 30” – because most folks over 30 had a mortgage and kids, and were so unwilling to risk losing their hard-earned property that they couldn’t even consider the possibility that it was Colonialism operating in Vietnam.  It had to be a holy war against “those who want to destroy our freedom (that is, property)” – pinko Commies then, Ragheads today.

While Clemente thinks it’s the Youth who see through the smoke today, there are lotsa folks over 30 whose mortgages have been raided by Banksters, who have a pretty clear picture of what’s going on.  The 60s ended in May 1970.  After Kent State, everyone on “both sides” was so stunned that the only option seemed to be to dial down the rhetoric and seek some kind of reconciliation.  Sure, the result was that the Urge (Pluto) to Freedom (Uranus) was co-opted by the Capitalist/Colonialist mainstream, but that sort of betrayal is less likely in this era, because we’re dealing with the Fourth Harmonic, not the First.

After the First Harmonic (Conjunction), the Energy goes underground.  So while it appeared that the Urge to Freedom was co-opted by Commercialism, the Energy was simply going underground to grow strong roots.  After the waxing Fourth Harmonic, the Energy clears the ground and sends up strong shoots.  While it looks bleak from the outside, from the inside it looks liberating, because the Urge to Freedom becomes a primary operating Energy in everyone’s unconscious processes.

We do need the Both/And of tolerance and, eventually, understanding.  If you want to get an early start on the Post-Calendric World, start Listening.  Hear and inquire.  A simple, honest, non-threatening “Why do you think that?” or “Are you willing to say more about those feelings?” could trigger someone to be a little more open and investigative with their own internal processes, to Awaken just a little.

Tigger and Rabbit

A friend writes anonymously,

I think you are talking about what has been my biggest question for over a decade, as I wrestle with “Law of Attraction” as practiced by my friend and trainer.  He doesn’t ever want to deal with “bad feelings” or negative thoughts.  He wants to turn them all into POSITIVES.  And while sometimes I think this is great, some times it feels like then I have to *stuff* what I am feeling… and that feels WRONG.  Like I am supposed to learn something first, or just feel it, or …..?  I would love to hear more about how one recognizes when one should just change a negative thought into a more positive one, and when one needs to stop and feel a negative feeling, so that it can dissipate on its own.

Indeed, I think this is fundamental.  First, let’s distinguish negative thoughts from negative feelings.  Negative feelings must always be processed – so far as I’ve seen, tapping them out is the fastest way to compost them.  The best way I’ve encountered for handling negative thoughts comes to me via Bryan deFlores: you simply say, “Cancel, Neutralize, Upgrade.”  That is, Cancel the negative thought, Neutralize it’s tendency to draw negative Energy to you, and Upgrade the part of you that’s vulnerable to negativity.  Basically the equivalent of Avert!, but you don’t need to be a Wizard to use it, and you’re using it on a part of yourself (though you could certainly use it on someone else’s thoughts too).

Now, of course distinguishing negative thoughts from negative feelings is not always trivial, because thoughts and feelings are so entangled.  On a primitive level, feelings occur in yer Body, or at least have a reflection there.  So that’s one cue – check into yer body, and if you feel it there, tap it out.  If you don’t, then Cancel, Neutralize, Upgrade.  It doesn’t hurt to CNU a feeling or tap out a thought, so it’s not a biggie.  Tapping will take you about about 45 seconds, and CNU will take 3-4 seconds, so it’s not a big investment either way – but that means you can devote an extra 40 seconds to visualizing yer Wannas if you can CNU instead of tapping.

A simple way to do it is to try CNU – if it was just a thought, that’ll be the end of it.  If it was an intellectualization of a feeling, or a premonitory intuition, it’ll keep coming back.  That’s a clue that you prolly wanna tap it out.  And of course, when you invite a negative feeling in by tapping on it, you never know where it’s gonna lead.  It could easily scrape open a scab into 45 minutes or 45 hours or 45 days, or perish the thought 45 years, not just 45 seconds.  But if it does, it’ll be the most productive thing you’ve ever done!  If you’re in a position to make that priority number one in your life, go for it!

If it’s really a premonition, which is always a possibility, then it’ll persist after tapping.  To receive any intuition, you need to be outside of the Ego, so Asking for Clarity would be useful.  I often have good success with something like Great Spirit, may I please have Clarity.  Tapping will change the Future, so don’t get stuck in an either/or intellectualization about “Is this my own Fear, or is this an intuition?”  Any time you have an either/or, you know you’re stuck in the mind – CNU it – I don’t mean CNU the drama you’re seeing; CNU the either/or tarpit.  It’s always both/and.  Sometimes it’s even both/and because if you don’t tap it out, it will become a premonition!

There are some interaction terms – for instance, when the thoughts or feelings aren’t your own, and/or when negativities arise in the middle of an interaction with another person, or in the middle of a task that requires full Attention.  If you’re starting to slide on ice, frinstance, the heck with whatever negativities are arising – put all of your Attention into steering into the slide.  There’ll be plenty of time for post mortems later.   This is a Both/And Planet.  Attend to the what the Muggles regard as the “Real” World and keep your Energy Body clean and whole.  It takes some practice at multi-tasking to do both at the same time, but it can often be done.

Otherwise you have to toggle – Attend to any threats first, then Attend to your Energy.  You don’t have to tap physically – you can use your imagination, and the effect will be the same, if perhaps not quite as strong.  So you can tap in the middle of a conversation, if you do it while someone else is speaking.  If things get hairy, you can excuse yourself to the washroom, and tap away in the privacy of yer own stall.  And you can CNU under your breath between words even while yer speaking.  I know people who don’t like to be “cursed” by what they interpret as a negative thought, like “Drive carefully!”  When I have a negative premonition about their future, I don’t warn them, I Pray for their safety instead, without telling them.  And of course I tap it out too.

My first teacher used to say that you can’t process someone else’s feelings.  Of course we were all programmed to try to do just that, because dang few of us grew up with emotionally mature parents (who projected their needs on us), and many of us grew up with siblings and classmates (and even teachers) who greatly enjoyed power-tripping at our expense.  And you know what they say about being responsible for the seven generations on either side of us.  If a few CNUs doesn’t quell a negativity, and tapping doesn’t do much, there’s a good chance you aren’t dealing with your own feelings.

Stephen Levine talks about the Fear and the Anger rather than my Fear and my Grief, as though none of our feelings are our own, but simply a field we walk into.  That’s a very powerful perspective, and when you recognize that our Individual Egos are simply holograms, it turns out to be waaay true.  We all know people who “dump” their feelings on us, and we’ve all been in the same house with someone who’s deeply entranced by some heavy feeling, and we can pick it up from the other side of the house.  Emotions are a component of Gravity, and therefore they can leak from one dimension into another – sometimes we feel happenings that aren’t even in our Universe.

We are the Victim of negativities, and there’s often a Perp.  When tapping does its job, it helps us identify the historical Perps who victimized us.  If we habitually adopt Victim roles in the present moment, then we need to retrain our Energy body.  Pray that your historical Perps are revealed to you, lovingly and gently, and tap out the memories involved.  Then mirror the present-moment Perps who are acting in your Victim play.  Imagine holding a full-length mirror between you and them, or between you and wherever they are, or between you and the picture of them in your mind’s eye.  The mirror side is away from you.  That’ll give you free space to be compassionate with your own Victim.  You can even mirror them while you’re talking to them – that’ll freak ’em out.

It would be powerful to practice this by mirroring the Bankers and other Elites, and their government lapdogs as well – we’re all entranced into a huge negativity around the World Economy and the evils of corruption in government and the drift toward fascism.  That’s a field, and it needs to be cleared.  Wanna serve the Planet?  Immerse yerself in all that negativity, then tap yer way out of it.

One more perspective – Fritz Perls’s.  If our negativities are sabotaging ourself, then yes, Fritz suggested we sit down and own them – the sabotage arises from a part of ourself that we don’t recognize as ourself, because of our programming (good boys and girls don’t feel that!), or because of Emotional Resistance (I can’t be one of those!).  By owning them, Fritz meant that we Ask what their positive function is in our life.  For instance, if we don’t feel comfortable with partnership, maybe it’s because our “introject” (the inner saboteur) is still trying to protect us from unplanned pregnancies.  Then we honor the introject for its noble purpose, and renegotiate the terms – if we’ve outgrown pregnancy, we might Ask it to hone our intuition against scams instead, frinstance.

Lotsa threads, eh?

Anaretic and Anaerobic

Veda Lila says that in her dream

“two 23-year-olds, in a conversation about generational differences that touched on social networking via the Internet, … both told me they had recently “deleted” their Facebook pages and wanted nothing more to do with it.  They felt too exposed by it, felt it complicated their social lives, and believed it was taking up too much of their time. …  Somehow these unrelated events connected with the Internet seem to tie in to the total lunar eclipse in the anaretic degree of Gemini.”

The anaretic degree, btw, is the last degree of a sign, just as the 7th Day is the last Day of an Eon.  The movie didn’t touch this at all, but the Fortune article reminded me strongly that when Bush II set up the Homeland Security Department (under Chertoff, the same guy who’s now selling the body scanners to the airports), many of the folks he hired to do it were unemployed because their former employers had, conveniently, recently declared them redundant.

Pluto rules Scorpio, and it does little harm to consider, as a perspective, that Pluto and Scorpio Energies run in the same channels.  Scorpio has a reputation for secrecy, but that’s because Scorpio feels compelled to “get to the bottom of things,” which involves issues which most other folks, for a variety of reasons (most of which have to do with Emotional Resistance – think Moon’s South Node), would rather keep under the rug.  So Scorpio learns early that it’s so much easier to sleuth ifya just don’t try to talk about it.

But now, remember where we are – just entering a New Paradigm about “An ancient pottery bowl filled with fresh violets” (Chiron-Neptune at 27 Aquarius), and just into Day 7 of the Galactic Underworld.  This is not the 6th Night anymore.  We need to keep our own Attention focused on the World we want to create, not on our Fears of what might be going on behind our backs.  But of course we need to do both/and.  Scorpio would be the first to tell you that Fears we don’t face may end up dominating the Unconscious and when that happens “we” become at risk of manifesting what “we” least want.  We live in a World of Energy and in a World of Matter, and we need to Attend to both.

So how do we avoid pushing negative material into unconsciousness while also keeping our Energy focused on our positive intentions?  The notion that we Manifest what we Attend to is a useful and sometimes powerful perspective, and the War Between Good and Evil is a theme we’ve all been programmed to Fear, by our religions and our nation-states.  Fear grips us, and often paralyzes us.  Here in this Window between the Worlds the Fear is entangled with Events Way Beyond our Control, and scarier yet.  All of this is Identity material – where is the Boundary between me and they?  Deal with those questions circumstantially, not absolutely.  One answer does not fit all scenarios.

My own strategy is to accept the Fear as a valid perspective, and tap it out.  There’s actually an excellent chance that the Fear is a good imitation of some (or a lot of) past life material, which is precisely what we’ve been talking about.  Open up to it, see where it leads you, and as soon as you start to get into an Emotional thicket, tap it out.  The Fear covers up important Skills that you may well need for survival as the Window narrows.  Then, when there’s no more Fear in your Body, then you can put your Attention onto the World you want to live in.  Give yourself at least as long to do that, as you spent on tapping out the Fear.   If you aren’t feeling the Fear, look for it.  Denial, whether conscious or unconscious, serves no one in this Window.

Solstice Eclipse Grand Cross

Here’s an interesting perspective that sounds all too plausible –

http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Geopolitics___Eurasia/US_Con_Job/us_con_job.html

Just cuz we’re paranoid, after all, don’t mean they aren’t out to get us.  The more perspectives, the better, eh?

Corner number 4 of the Solstice Eclipse Grand Cross features a Stellium (whole groupa planets Conjunct in one spot, meaning complexity and hence confusion) of Sun, Pallas, the Moon’s North Node, Mercury, Pluto, and Mars.  Sun and Pallas are less than half a degree apart.  Pallas represents good boundaries – an excellent time to review whom we can trust to do what.

Astrology’s kinda like an essay test in an English class.  You make synonyms for each of the planets and angles, and see how many different ways you can combine them all in a sentence or two…

Conjunction = merging
Stellium = entanglement
Sun = essence
Pallas = boundaries
North Node = our personal destination
Mercury (since it’s retrograde, maybe) = reconsideration
Pluto = inevitability
Mars (which is outabounds) = aggressive action

Well, the first notion that pops into my mind is the sense that our lives are out of control, that we’re being swept over a waterfall.  Of course, I spend a lot of time studying what’s going on with the World Economy, so that’ll bias my interpretation.  So let’s shift to the LeftBrain to see if we can verify that.

So we’re acting decisively (Mars) to protect (Pallas) ourself (Sun) from being entangled (Stellium) in a Lemming-rush (Pluto) so we can create the future we want (North Node), and we’ve really just started to reconsider (Mercury) how vulnerable we are and whether our strategies are likely to work?  Or maybe – since the North Node is not in general malefic, and Pluto isn’t either as long as we aren’t trying to paddle uphill – Feeling threatened (Mars and Pallas), we’re thinking hard (Mercury) about how to respond assertively (Mars) to our sense that forces beyond our control (Pluto) are entangling (Stellium) us in processes that may derail our future (North Node)?

Notice that we can interpret the planetary Energies actively (we Act) or passively (they Act upon us) – and we’re ahead if we explore both alternatives.  Like I say, the North Node leads us toward our Future, so even if we feel tenative (Mars, Mercury, Pallas, Stellium), the feeling is likely to propel us into action to support ourself.

Now, one last Energy – another element of Grace; an Outabounds Ceres sits in  Third-Sixth Harmonic angles across the Juno-Jupiter-Uranus opposition.  That means we are more likely to succeed by keeping our eye on the long term, rather than by reacting to short-term crises.  And that we’re more likely to make that very choice (that’s the Grace part).

So now we getta put it all together.

The recent new Download from our Soul Chord (Jupiter-Uranus) is waking us up (Opposition) to who we’ve been believing ourselves to be (Juno), and how we might have been sabotaging ourself.  The Eclipse is giving us a big opportunity to recover Skills we mastered in prior lives (Moon-South Node), though of course we may have to confront some unpleasant unfinished Emotional business in order to receive them.  Since the Planet has also received a new Download recently (Chiron-Neptune), global circumstances have changed, and we also need to adjust our own postures in order to align with those changes.

Fortunately, the winds of change are blowing our way (Pluto-North Node), and we’re willing and able to reconsider our postures (Mercury retro) and act decisively (Outabounds Mars-Pluto) to readjust our defenses (Pallas).  We may feel that some of our short-term strategies are threatened, but that’s likely to be because they need readjustment to maintain our long-term safety (Ceres).  In that long-term context, the global changes are actually beneficial to our future, even if some of the short-term changes we need to make feel painful.

Or, from the Victim perspective,

The World is changing, and the changes challenge us to the core, and we need to make painful changes to respond.

All in all though, the prognosis is pretty positive, so even our Victims will probably feel our Ego Deaths to be a lot less painful than Ego Deaths usually are.  It is the Seventh Day, after all, so we’ve already gone through most of our traumas.

RightBrain, LeftBrain, Who Gots the Brain

Castaneda’s book Power of Silence does an excellent job of describing the contest between the “Left Brain” and the “Right Brain.”  Who wins?

Nobody.

It’s a tie.  If yer gonna use the Right Brain, you gotta make sure your projections aren’t contaminated by your wannabes.  The MO of the Right Brain is Intuition.  Intuition has two sources of misdirection: emotional holding, and values.  Emotional holding will make some outcomes impermissible, because in order to allow them you’d have to embrace emotions that you’ve proven to yourself are unembraceable.  Your values can reject real outcomes that don’t meet your expectations.

If yer gonna use the Left Brain, you gotta make sure your assumptions are as close to HardCopy Reality as you can get them.  The Left Brain, recall, uses Logic as its MO, and Logic is content-neutral.  Logic is about If-Then.  You might get everybody to agree on the Then part, but if yer If part is all wet, everybody drowns.  And it should be obvious that emotional holding and values – not to mention ideologies – can perturb your assumptions.

So both paths have pitfalls.  It’s nice to use one to validate the other, but it really doesn’t work, because emotional holding and values and ideologies cross-contaminate both.  All you end up with is Certainty, and if you’re Certain and wrong, sooner or later “Reality” – that Plutonian River, Styx – will slap you down bigtime.  In reality they always work together anyway, because it’s your Right Brain that delivers yer assumptions to yer Left Brain.

So the answer is to seek Consciousness, seek to embrace as many of yer emotions as you can, recognize that yer values may not be in synch with the tides so you know when to hedge yer bets (or settle for losing a battle to survive for another opportunity), and seek to understand as many perspectives as possible, so your ideologies are flexible enough to adapt to changing circumstances.

Which is all just introduction.  We could relate this introduction to the fourth corner of the Solstice Eclipse Grand Cross, and we’ll do that soon.  The reason for the lengthy introduction is to avoid apologizing for introducing a very Left Brain lecture.  This is a very long talk, but it’s worth every minute.  In my view, this person is being very clear – his assumptions are neither ideologically driven nor emotionally driven.  One value they reveal is Survival is Good – the alternative to that is pretty nihilistic, and we aren’t in a particularly nihilistic phase in any of our major trends, so I don’t see a good reason to reject Survival is Good.

The venue is Johns Hopkins University, certified left-brain, and the speaker, Jim Rickards, has credentials as long as yer arm, in both private business and public service.  Set aside a coupla hours, and watch this video; it’ll enhance yer Survival meaningfully.

http://outerdnn.outer.jhuapl.edu/rethinking/VideoArchives/MrJamesGRickardsPresentationVideo.aspx

Corner #3

We’ve talked about two of the four corners of the Solstice Grand Cross…

The Outabounds Eclipsed Moon, conjunct to it’s own South Node.  This means that the Moon is descending, from being “above” the Earth-Sun plane, to being “below” the Earth-Sun plane.  The Descending Node is about releasing or re-leasing the Emotions we were unable to embrace in prior lifetimes, and about recovering or re-covering the Skills we developed in prior lifetimes.  Eclipsed means in-yer-face.  Outabounds means we’re more Emotional than usual.  Conjunct means we can’t tell the difference – we regress to our prior lifetimes.  Close yer eyes, look down, and ask yerself what kinda shoes yer wearing.  If yer worst fears appear to be manifesting, the source is probably not real – our Descending Node material is “only” holographic.

Solstice means the year begins here, that this chart applies not just now, but for the entire year to come.  Of course, in the Southern Hemisphere, this is a Summer Eclipse, when Light peaks.  Grand Cross means Mastery through Challenge – we gain wisdom (if we don’t run away screaming – or maybe even if we do) by enduring challenging experiences.  Not intellectual wisdom, but Body-Emotion-Spirit-Intellectual Wisdom – Mastery.

The second corner is…

The asteroid Juno, which symbolizes merging.  So we’re already, thanks to the Descending Moon, merged with a persona or two from some prior drama, and Juno greatly deepens the trance.  The combination means that the Eclipse is likely to bring to our Attention how many of the personae we use routinely are really relics of prior lives.  Adopting a role is a skill, if we can choose to use it when it’s effective and not use it when it’s not effective.  Trancing into a persona is quite the opposite – if we don’t even know we’re entranced, we don’t have a choice, and we’re at the mercy of whatever circumstances we’re in.  So this is a great wake-up call, holding the potential to snap our fingers and break a trance we didn’t know we were in.

And we mentioned one of the Exit Ramps – the Grace which sometimes accompanies a Grand Cross and points the way to a get-outa-jail card that can make our Challenges a little less onerous…

If we notice when we’re tranced, we can break through to being closer to “objective” reality, such as it is, and when we do that we sabotage ourself a lot less.  Grace here involves Curiosity – when we find ourselves curious about how strange things are, it’s a red flag that tells us to take a step forward and then turn around and look back at ourself.  When we can see the Trance, we’re no longer its Victim, and suddenly the World is quite different.  This is one of the meanings of the New Paradigm signaled by the recent Chiron-Neptune Rebirth.

We haven’t talked yet about the third corner, which is the Jupiter-Uranus Conjunction, or the recent New Download from our Soul Chord.  Not a big surprise that Identity and Trance is lit up, because in order to integrate our new Soul Impulse we’re probably gonna hafta make space for it by allowing anything in our old Ego-self that’s incompatible with the New.

Uranus tells us to Wake Up! – and often that means we “have trouble” sleeping.  We sleep less, because we’re waking up.  If we have a rutted notion of how much sleep we need and when, that’s trouble.  If you go to bed and you aren’t sleepy, get up and do something fun (or meditate on lovely thoughts – that’ll probably reveal some Trances too).  When Uranus is lit up, we often don’t need as much sleep, so there’s an excellent chance you’ll be surprised about how you don’t feel nearly as tired tomorrow as you expected to.

The “downside” of Uranus is disruption.  Uranus disrupts anything which isn’t in integrity with our Soul Chord.  You don’t want to be too literal about this – there are lots of other “reasons” why disruption might arise.  But with Uranus lit up, it’s an excellent idea to stop and meditate on whether you might want to let go of what was disrupted.  Like the old If you love something, let it go adage.

The other strong element of Uranus is Creativity.  Don’t get even, get odd, as they say.  You’re likely to have the urge to act out of character.  Well, guess what – acting out of character is just stepping out of a Trance.  Go for it, I dare ya.

Opportunity

As me dear Mum useta say, “Why James, this is the End Times!”  The reason that Christmas is the holiday, rather than the Solstice, is that the Solstice marks the bottom of a very flat arc.  Days don’t start getting longer at the Solstice, they start getting longer at Christmas.  Since Time Immemorial, humans (and probably others as well) at dawn and at Solstice/Christmas, have prayed ritually for Return of the Light.   When it’s darkest, we often don’t believe the Light will ever return.  Lemme say that again,

When it’s darkest, we don’t believe the Light will ever return .

When the Fourth Harmonic (Mastery through Challenge) afflicts us as it does this Solstice, often, when we’re lucky, the Third Harmonic (Grace) comes to our rescue.  The Fourth Harmonic comes to us at the Solstice via a Grand Cross – four planets equally spaced around the Zodiacal circle.  Grace doesn’t absolve us from enduring the experiences that enable our eventual Mastery, but Grace points us toward the way out, the way out of believing that the Light will never return.

The Solstice Grand Cross comes with Grace, and that Grace arrives mainly through Chiron-Neptune, which we’ve written about at length over the last several years.  Neptune represents our relationship with everything larger than ourself, including our relationship with God/Goddess.  Chiron represents the edge between Despair and Miracle.  Despair is simply the belief that it’ll never get Light again.  It’s not about the Light, it’s about the Belief, about the emotional and intellectual state of the observer.  When something happens which our Beliefs don’t normally allow to happen, it’s a Miracle.  Despair means we need to examine our Beliefs.  We need to stretch our Beliefs.

Juno sits on one corner of his particular Grand Cross, and Juno is about merging, about the kind of Identity issues where we can’t distinguish ourSelf from what we’re merged with.  We transcend that through Ego Death.  Ego Death is painful – it literally feels like we’re dying, because “we” are, quite literally, dying.  Not that our animate vehicle is dying; our egoic vehicle is dying, transforming, rebirthing.  In other words, it ain’t gonna be easy to trance-send our Beliefs painlessly, but the way out involves accepting a New Paradigm that allows a Miracle.  The thing about Miracles is that they’re unexpected, they always come from the direction we least expect them to come from – how could it be otherwise, since they come from a paradigm out beyond the trance of our Limiting Beliefs.

Actually, there’s a larger element of “luck” (assuming you don’t assume this is all planned ahead of time) – the angular relationship between Juno and Chiron-Neptune is 150 degrees.  This angle, five signs, is about Curiosity.  It’s the only well-accepted astrological angle that’s not a Harmonic, that doesn’t divide evenly into 360.  It regresses us back to our infancy, before we developed any Limiting Beliefs, when everything around us was full of Wonder and Awe, and we were amazed and transfixed by it all.  So we sit in our trance saying to ourself (or out loud even), “Wow, looka that willya!  Who’da thunk it!”  We don’t realize how profound it is that we’re actually looking through new eyes, seeing beyond what we know of the Universe.  We just think we’re watching a show we’ve never seen before that surprises us.

That’s a lot sweeter than every other Ego Death we been through!

The Grand Cross sits on the “Aries Point,” which is the cusps of the Cardinal (first, or creative) signs, Aries/Cancer/Libra/Capricorn.  Another indication that something very new is being born here.  We’ll talk more about the other corners of the Grand Cross this weekend, but for now, let’s focus on the Moon, which sits on a second corner.  The Moon is totally eclipsed a few hours before the Solstice.  Since the Return of the Light is a birth, the Solstice Horoscope is the natal horoscope for the coming year, and the coming year corresponds pretty well with Day Seven of the Mayan Calendar’s Galactic Underworld.  (The 7 days and 6 nights of the Universal Underworld begin March 8, 2011 by Calleman’s calculations, and overlaps Day 7 of all of the previous Underworlds, including the Galactic.)

So 2011 is Totally Eclipsed.  Eclipse is another element of Despair-Opportunity; it’s a bringing of darkness, but it occludes something important, something we haven’t noticed, and by occluding it, it makes it visible.  That’s the nature of Consciousness; new windows of Consciousness are not discovered, but differentiated.  They were there all along, but our Limiting Beliefs prevented us from seeing them.  When something which we take for granted is suddenly not there, we suddenly notice it.  The Opportunity, the Miracle, is huge, because Consciousness is The Prize.  We may not be able to take our Wealth, in whatever form we enjoy it, on to the next lifetime, but we do take Consciousness with us from the current life to the next.  It is the Jewel in the Heart of the Lotus.

So this Eclipsed Moon sits on one corner of our Solstice Grand Cross.  And it’s Out of Bounds.  The Moon represents our Authenticity, our moment-to-moment Emotional reality.  Our real, unprotected, unedited, moment-to-moment, everchanging response to the Flow as it washes over us.  The Eclipse is in the 30th degree of Gemini, “A Parade Of Bathing Beauties Before Large Beach Crowds.”  That’ll certainly trigger our Identity Trances, whether we’re in the Crowd or one of the Beauties.

Out of Bounds means “stronger than usual” – the Moon, our Authenticity, will be much more important than usual.  Classic example – the Moon goes Out of Bounds for a few days every two weeks for 11 years, then for the next 11 years don’t go Out of Bounds at all.  The current 11-year Lunar Out of Bounds period began at 10am on September 11, 2001 – we’ve been more Emotional, and called to be more Authentic (which when combined with Intolerance looks like Polarization) ever since.  We don’t “calm down” till April 23, 2011 – soon!  Can’t wait.

At the Solstice Eclipse, the Moon conjoins it’s own South Node, commonly called the Dragon’s Tail.  Dragon is the Oriental symbol for Karma, and the Tail is what we all drag around behind us – our unfinished business.  So yes, lotsa keening, lots of our Worst Fears staring us in the face, lotsa grief and, as our Victim is triggered, anger and defensiveness and Blame.  But remember, we bring with us into this lifetime whatever Consciousness we’ve gained in earlier days.  So the Dragon’s Tail also represents access to all of the skills we’ve gained in earlier days.  This is a huge Opportunity!

So we live, all of us, most of the time, in a cardboard box.  The walls of the box are our Limiting Beliefs, projections of our unfinished business, the Emotions we don’t tolerate because they’re too painful for us to embrace.  We can’t usually see beyond the walls of our box, and when we do, we feel Separate from what’s going on there on the Other Side, isolated from it, Abandoned by it.  We feel like we don’t belong there, even though we’d like to have the option, they’re obviously having more fun than we are.  Cardboard turns to mush when it rains.  Rain = Emotion.  We unlock our prison by allowing ourselves to feel all of our feelings, by throwing ourself into our Resistance.

So now, at this Eclipse, at this Solstice, and for the coming year, we meet this Separation not with Grief and Fear, but with Curiosity.  We can step outside our box without having to die to do it.  But Curiosity also regresses us to our infancy – we may not even realize that we have control over our own muscles!  So the Energy we have to provide consciously is Action.  We see outside the box without our usual negative response, but we’re so unfamiliar with that state that we’re frozen.  By Acting, by stepping outside, we break the Trance.  It’s a Get Outa Jail card, a free pass to let go of Karma and join a larger Universe.  But we need to wake up when it happens, we need to Act, we need to remember our adult skills.  When we do that, we’ll discover a huge reservoir of skills we’d forgotten that we have.

Countdown

In the forward to Ram Dass‘s new book Be Love Now: The Path of the Heart, coauthor Rameshwar Das writes,

“When we met again the following fall, we recalled the long dormant manuscript sitting in my basement.  We decided it was time to bring it to light and see what was there.  As we tried to make sense of what we said in the 1970s, reworked it, and brought it into the present moment, a kind of joy suffused the process.  The 1960s and 1970s are long gone, yet the sense of unconditional love that was awakened then – the ocean tide of the guru’s compassion, the journey set in motion within us – is still the beacon of our shared universe.”

This is the sense I mean when I say that the year 2012 is When the 60s Become Permanent.  I say that because a new Energy is born when two planets meet in the sky, then that new Energy appears to go dormant for about a quarter of the Cycle between those two planets, while it establishes its roots.  For anyone who’s sensitive to the new Energy, either Welcoming or Resisting it, the birth is very obvious and momentous.  Both the Welcoming (Peace and Love) and the Resisting (Lawn Order) sides of the energy of the 60s and 70s were very prominent and very adamant.  Eventually, in the U.S., after Kent State, the Resisting side gave in to the Welcoming side, and as any Power Elite worth it’s salt always does, the Resisting side simply co-opted the Welcoming side.

It’s easy to lose faith during the incubation period that occurs during the first quarter of a Cycle.  The new Energy, after such a wonderful flowering, appears to fade back into the woodwork and disappear.  But it don’t disappear.  It’s just making solid roots.  The same will be true of the two major Energies recently born. The New Paradigm of Chiron-Neptune will be heading underground, to surface again around 2042.  And the subtle parts of the new download from yer Soul Chord will be percolating until about  2032, although the more surficial elements get thrown out of the nest in 2014.

The Cycle which reaches its Fourth Harmonic stage (a quarter way ’round the Cycle) in 2012 is Uranus-Pluto.  Uranus-Pluto is important because Pluto represents the Inevitable, and Uranus represents yer Soul Chord.  So under this Energy, you just gotta be You, no masks, no hiding out, no bushels to hide yer Light under.  This Energy comes out of hiding in June of 2012, just after the Solstice.  In Calleman’s view, that’s eight months after the end of the Mayan Calendar.

There are more immediate adventures coming up next week, when a Total Eclipse of the Moon visits us just before this year’s December Solstice.  We’ll be writing about that soon; it’s a very tidy chart!

Why Is Everybody So Angry?

Of course, whenever I find myself asking that question (such as lately), I always ask, Why am I so angry? and sometimes I do get a string of excuses from my Victim, and I just gotta figure out where and how to set boundaries.  More often there doesn’t seem to be a good answer, and I just get to tap on it.  Well, today there is a good answer, if you’re willing to accept “the stars” as a valid Why.  Not causally of course, just a correlation.  Mars doesn’t move on its own y’know, it’s our collective anger that pushes it around.

The corollary is Why isn’t anything working out? – Why is everything so hard?  Mercury doesn’t go retrograde till Friday!  “Things” (and processes) should be falling into place more easily, especially now that Uranus (since yesterday) is no longer retrograde!  But everything’s one step forward, two back, then two forward but in a different direction.  At least that’s the way they are hereabouts.  How ’bout at your place?

Well, if you speak Astrologese, I could answer all those questions in one very long sentence, but I’ll save that for later.  For now, let’s just look at a few of the components of what’s happening, and see if we can flip the coin over and see the Master’s perspective rather than the Victim’s.

First, there’s a huge Inevitability going on.  If that sounds serious, well, it is.  And we aren’t even talking about our recent personal Rebirth (Jupiter-Uranus), or our collective Miraculous Change of Paradigm (Chiron-Neptune), that we’ve been harping on for several years.  I’m “just” talking about Pluto moving into Capricorn.  Well, that’s not new, it’s been coming on for three years now.  But evidently we been missing something, cuz it’s acting out bigtime now and demanding our attention.  Astroturgically, it’s a Stellium (a whole buncha planets meeting up) on Pluto, with the Moon, and Mercury, and Mars, and Pallas, and the Dragon’s Head, all inna huddle.

Well, any Conjunction (a Stellium is a whole buncha Conjunctions together) is a Merging.  When two planets come together, we can’t distinguish one from the other.  So for instance, with Moon and Mercury Conjunct (that’s part of the Stellium), we can’t tell our Emotions (Moon) from our Thoughts (Mercury).  Throw in Mars, and everything’s all Impatience and Frustration (that is, Action that misses the mark, because our motives and plans are all confused by Moon-Mercury).  And both Mercury and Mars are Outabounds (strong)!  Pallas might lend a bit of Wisdom to the picture, if we stumbled onto that side of her, and didn’t meet her cheerleader side, rooting for Mars.  But we wouldn’t be able to differentiate her Wisdom anyway, cuz it’s all merged with rest of the chaos.

Then we got Pluto and the Dragon’s Head.  It really helps when we can see either or both of these folks clearly, cuz they both point to where we’re heading.  Hard to get the turns right when we aren’t sure of our destination.  Jung couldn’t fathom why he was having dreams about all of Europe erupting in conflagration, till World War I made it clear to him that these dreams weren’t personal.  This is Pluto, the River of Time that carries us all with it, if we’re in that trance, and it’s a difficult trance to escape.  The Dragon’s Head is more personal, but when it aligns with Pluto (it was “exact” November 27), it’s like a slingshot – when our own direction is downstream, we take off like a shot from a cannon.

Except for all the obfuscation from our other friends.  Well, the obfuscation has a purpose.  With Pluto Conjunct the Dragon’s Head, we are moving where we need to be moving, and fast.  So we’re bound to be a little panicked, fearing a loss of Control at that speed.  And that’s exactly the issue, surrendering Control.  Lewis & Clark were amazed at one of the tribes they met in the Bitterroots, who ran around all day like Stooges trying to kill a Deer without any proper tools to do it, because they felt obliged to feast their strange guests.

So many of our normal everyday tools for our life process – Emotion, Thought, Action, Boundaries – are running around with their arms flailing, feeling like they must be letting us down because they have no grounding or traction.  That’s what we’re feeling.  If we can accept loss of Control and negotiate compromise with the Flow, we can be content with those two steps sideways, even if we personally feel like we’ve failed because it wasn’t us that did it.

But that’s only the beginning.  This Pluto Stellium is one corner of a Grand Cross.  The Grand Cross, remember, is four linked Fourth-Harmonic angles, and the Fourth Harmonic is about Mastery through Challenge.  As wisdom is to knowledge, the Fourth Harmonic is to experience.  We can collect experience easier than collecting stamps.  But we have to outmaneuver our Victim and allow our experience to surprise us by organizing itself outside of our Limiting Beliefs, before Mastery comes to us.  It’s not something we do – it’s something that we allow to happen to us.  So what are the tree other corners, because they’ll give us a whole buncha insight.

Well, of course the Dragon’s Tail is Opposite the Stellium.  When we have our back to our direction of travel, the Dragon’s Tail represents the Limiting Beliefs which hold us back from Surprise and Delight.  Our Victim, in other words.  The Dragon’s Tail is also a Pandora’s Box full of all of the experiences of all of our Past Lives (and by extension, when we avoid re-leasing our Karma, everyone else’s Past Lives).  When we put our Victim behind us (Get thee behind me, Satan!), that huge reservoir of experience can support a leap into hyperspace by our Master!

The other two corners?  Well, it’s an Opposition between our friendly Jupiter-Uranus Soul Rebirth, and Juno.  Juno represents what we’re merged with.  So this Opposition is pointing out to us very clearly where our Ego Identities are getting in the way of our acceptance of our the New Download from our Soul Chord.  The Opposition is the Second Harmonic, the High Priestess, who weighs feathers and bullion to be sure they’re in balance.  Whenever we encounter an apparent contradiction, like Heads and Tails, we need to ask, what is the coin? We need to be the Scales, not the contents of either basket.

Eugene Gendlin is the master of this process, and I refer you to either of his books, Focusing, or Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams.  He says it all so much better than I ever could.  It’s worth the effort, believe me!  Used copies of Focusing start at a penny on Amazon.  The other book is spendier, but you’ll never regret reading that book – it’ll change your life.

So we’d summarize all that by saying, Wherever you encounter resistance, give it to God.  Or rather, give it to the Goddess – the Third-Harmonic angles from the corners of the Grand Cross are Venus and Chiron-Neptune.  The Third Harmonic is Grace, and Third-Harmonic and Sixth-Harmonic (Creativity) angles to Fourth-Harmonic configurations represent the easy way to gain Mastery.  This is different from cheating, because you’re still going to experience the Challenges that will lead you to Mastery.  The difference is that when you bully your way through them with Ego, you gain just as much Mastery, it’s just a lot more painful.  When you give it to the Goddess, She’s right there with the new tools you need for both Healing and Doing.

That one sentence?  Well, the Dragon’s Tail sits in a Grand Cross on the Cardinal cusps with Juno and Jupiter-Uranus (with Uranus stationary direct) and a Stellium of Pluto-Dragon’s Head-Moon-Mercury-Mars-Pallas (with Mercury and Mars Outabounds and Mercury about to turn Retrograde), and also sits in an Air-Water Grand Trine with Venus and Chiron-Neptune!  That sentence even introduces several intriguing elements that we haven’t talked about.  Or, Wherever you encounter resistance, give it to the Goddess.