Awe II

This is from Stephen Harrod Buhner’s The Secret Teachings of Plants in the Direct Perception of Nature, pp.148-151.  I’ve made a few small modifications to establish context and maintain continuity…

“Using direct perception to learn the medicinal powers of plants is not a spectator sport.  Eventually you have to move from looking and go into feeling, realizing that feeling is a sense, too.  Not the touch of the fingers, but the touch of the heart.  This kind of touch has another dimension, deeper than that possessed by the fingers.

“and as we touch, so are we touched

“Everything has a hidden face.  Hidden, not in the sense that it is intentionally concealed, but in that it can only be seen with different eyes than the physical.  A different mode of perception must be used.  The hidden face of Nature can only be seen with the heart.

“Sit with a plant, focus on its sensory attributes, and begin to

”    s l o w    d o w n    n o w

“Become aware of the feelings that arise in you as you sit by the plant.  How do you feel?  Now you are learning to see – not merely the physical form of things, but the meanings that each thing expresses.

“Everything we encounter in the wildness of the world gives off its own electromagnetic pulse of communication.  These waveforms are filled with meanings, living communications that touch us and that we experience as feelings.”

“Because we have been taught for so long to disregard these kinds of feelings, it may be hard to let yourself notice them.  Begin by allowing yourself to describe these plant-generated feelings in any way they come to you.  Take the step of letting them come into consciousness and emerge into words.  Do not control the words or make them big and analytical.  Let them emerge of themselves, in their own form.  Give yourself permission to say out loud what they are, no matter how foolish they might seem to your linear mind.

“It is a rare qualification to be able to conceive and suffer the truth to pass through us living and intact.    –Thoreau

“Because of our long habituation in the linear mind and the things we have been taught about the livingness[or absence thereof] of the world, this is the hardest thing of all – to give reality to the feelings that flow into us from the world itself.”

“Giving reality to the feelings that come to us from the world directly contradicts the Western insistence on the linear mind and the (presumed) unreality of the living soulfulness of the world around us.  Doing so breaks a cultural agreement that is powerful and strong and deeply embedded within us.”

“Embracing the reality of the feelings that come to us from the world is the first step in the decolonization of the soul.  In this moment, the linear mind is truly left behind.  This is the moment you begin to use a different mode of cognition – the moment you begin to think with your heart.”

“Most of us have been taught that feelings only come from within us.  For those of us who wish to learn directly from the wildness of the world, to learn directly from plants the medicinal uses they possess, it is essential to begin to feel with the heart.  To do so you must go to meet the plant with your most vulnerable self.  You must open your heart and let the plant’s living communication flow into you, weave through you.  You must receive what it has to offer.”

“Because it is out of your conscious awareness, you must notice everything that your body does during this process, everything you feel, every stray thought that comes into your head, no matter how insignificant, unrelated, or ridiculous it seems.  You are learning a new language now.”

Fresh Violets in an ancient pottery bowl.  Reanimating the Planet and its denizens is one of the first steps in making ourselves a Sustainable Home here.

New Moon of the Giraffe

As usual, Kelley Hunter’s Lunar Summary is completely complementary…

http://heliastar.com/cosmic-news/neptunian-new-moonian/

A couple of notes: the latin name of the Giraffe is Giraffe camelopardis because the Giraffe’s body resembles that of a Camel.  Also, the Giraffe has the largest Heart of any land animal – how timely.  Large-Hearted Giraffe is used as a totem by the Nonviolent Communication movement.

Sedna Full Moon

Cacoxenated Amethyst.  The smaller brownish Crystals are Cacoxenite, or Hydrated Iron Aluminum Oxide Phosphate Hydroxide.  The Power in this combination derives from the Ascension of the Purple Quartz (7th Chakra) and the Phosphate (the “Bringer of Light”), the Grounding of the Iron, the Clarity of the Aluminium, the Energization of the orange-brown (3rd Chakra) Cacoxenite, and the unbounded Grace of the Waters in the Cacoxenite.  Like “Walking the Spiritual Path with practical feet” as Angie Arrien puts it, while having a Magic Wand to make it all effortless.

Declare the Intention that these Crystals will speak to you.  Then sit back, make your vision fuzzy, enjoy that for a little while, then let one part of the picture stand out and draw your Attention.  Don’t choose one part, let the picture choose the part and present it to you.  Focus your Attention on that part without focusing your vision.  Then Ask yourself, without allowing words in the answer, How does this Feel?

Which Full Moon occurs at quarter past noon PDT May 14. 

Start with Kelley Hunter’s excellent summary at http://heliastar.com/cosmic-news/awe-full-moon/, and don’t miss her section on Algol.  Kelley uses a slightly different angle on astrology than we do…

She doesn’t use the asteroids or the dwarf planets as much, and she uses a wider degree of Sensitivity than we do – we try to stick with three degrees.  Saturn, for instance, is four and a quarter degrees from the Full Moon, and Algol is three degrees and four minutes from the Sun.  I’m obviously splitting hairs there – her approach is absolutely as valid as ours, if not more so.

but she speaks from basically the same Worldview as we do…

In a word (so to speak), a Gender-Equal (if not more so) Jungian Worldview.  She has advanced degrees in this Worldview, we just have a ton of reading, access from past lives, an open Channel, and several appropriate natal planets.

We’ll look at the Full Moon from a slightly different perspective…

We’ll emphasize the Pallas Mjolnir and the Sun-Sedna Conjunction (they’re only ten minutes, or one sixth of a degree, apart – that is, Sedna Initiates the Sun only four hours after the Full Moon).

but if you combine her perspective with ours you’ll be a million miles ahead. 

You also don’t want to forget the two relevant issues we’ve already talked about, the Big Grace…

The Jupiter-Saturn-Chiron Grand Trine.

and our evolving Yintegrity work as we restructure our orientation toward the Sacred…

The Jupiter T-Square with Vesta and the budding Uranus-Venus Initiation.

So those are two more perspectives to integrate.  Remind me a little later and I’ll try to help pull it all back together.

Our own perspective on the Full Moon itself involves mostly Boundaries and Responsibility.  Stephen Buhner (Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal World: Beyond the Doors of Perception into the Dreaming of Earth, pp.356-7) starts it off for us with some opportunities around Boundaries…

“During such moments, whether they come from a dolphin or a great tree we have unexpectedly stumbled upon in some ancient forest, we are suddenly caught up in something that has nothing to do with the human world.  We feel something coming into us from out there, something that is outside our narrow human perspectives.  In that moment, we are pulled out of ourselves into a world that is more ancient than the human – a place where living intelligences can teach each other as kin.  We discover then that trees have been doing something more for the past 300 million years than simply pining away for our emergence.

“We feel the touch of life, of a nonhuman awareness, upon us.  But more – we experience something unique to most humans in the West.  An intelligence, just as subtle and sophisticated as our own, but very nonhuman, reaches out and communicates with us.  Across the species divide, in spite of our isolation, a different kind of language than our own, one filled with meaning and intent, tells us something.  And a new world opens up.  When that happens we take a long floating leap, land somewhere else, and look around with new eyes.  We experience in that moment what the ancient Greeks – the Athenians – called aisthesis, the touch of a nonhuman soul upon the deeps of us – and know that ours touches them in turn.

“We are not here for ourselves alone

“Aisthesis such as this often emerges into our experience at unexpected times.  It comes sideways to our normal orientation, grabs the depths of us and drags us unexpectedly into a world we did not suspect existed.

“This is almost always how it begins for us in the West

“And when that happens, we abandon the view of life that does not allow us to extend interiority to dolphins or trees or rocks.

“And so break the great injunction of reductionist science

“Being unable to extend interiority and consciousness outward, as Robert Bly once said, keeps human beings isolated in their own house and, in extreme cases, we simply look out at a world with which we have no possibility of contact.  We are cut off from the metaphysical background of the world and our perceptual capacities are kept in a box.

“A box that science teaches us is the whole world

“If that box is very tiny, as it is with strict reductionists, the mind can see very little of the real world that lies outside the box; there is only the human on a ball of resources hurling around the sun.  All things in the universe – from that orientation – center around the human, for there is no exterior consciousness.  To such scientists the sun may no longer revolve around the Earth but it most certainly still revolves around human beings.

“But … once you are touched by a living intelligence from out there, you are changed.  It is nearly impossible not to be.  The living reality of that experience works on the self, undermining the old paradigm, and you begin to, more and more frequently, step outside the normal habituated boundaries of the Western world.  You begin to enter an older, wilder, less domesticated world, the place barbarians inhabit, where the hair begins to grow long, where wild lights begin to gleam in the eye.  You begin to enter the wilderness that still lies underneath the concrete of the civilized world.”

Boundaries used to mean being able to say No! and being honest without offending.  We’re stretching a bit here, eh?  A stretch that’s necessary if we give a shit about the future of the Planet, let alone our grandkids.  

The Sedna discovery chart features a Pallas T-Square with Chiron and Saturn.  Plus, the May 14 Sedna-Sun Initiation occurs at 25 Taurus, “A vast public park” – aka The Commons.

The folks who have been teaching us about Pi emphasize that our Piscean Victims no longer have a starring role in the Age of Aquarius.  We need to prioritize and Focus our Energy on What We Want rather than wallowing in our “They won’t let us have it” Victimhood.  Remember what we said about Unconscious Despair in The Ides of May?

Don’t waste the Chiron Grand Trine we have for the rest of May – get your butte in gear!

This Full Moon adds another layer of Responsibility.  We can no longer be Victims of our Relationship Patterns.

Kelley was riffing on the Venus-Uranus Conjunction square to Jupiter and Pluto, plus the Venus-Mars Mutual Reception, when she brought Relationship into her Full Moon reading.  We’re extending that, as our three-degree focus and adding the asteroids puts more weight on the Jupiter T-Square with Vesta and Uranus-Venus.  Plus, a major element of the Sedna discovery chart was a Venus T-Square with Mars and Jupiter, while Venus was flanked closely by Pluto and Vesta.  So Sedna tells us to stop projecting and get intimate and beyond Judgment and Denial with our own Anima and Animus.

In the Sedna discovery chart (which tells us about the Full Moon because it tells us about Sedna, and Sedna is very close to the Sun at Full Moon) the Sun is on the South Node (taking responsibility for one’s Karma), and there are two Pythagorean Tricolors – Pallas Square Saturn Quincunx Venus Trine Pallas…

If you aren’t sure where to Focus to stretch our Boundaries, Ask yourself What would the Heart do?

and Mars Square Venus Quincunx Saturn Trine Mars…

If your Inner Boy and Inner Girl are already married, then Relationship to you is something you do just for fun, not something you do out of need or with difficulty.  If that’s not you, then Ask yourself What’s The Most Important Thing I should be Focusing on? 

Okay, we’ve covered a lot of ground.  Time to review and reintegrate. 

• Kelley suggests that we work on our Victim spaces, reminds us that it’s our Inner Female who leads because she’s the one who understands what’s important to us, and challenges us to a fourth-step inventory of who we really are.
• We remind about the Big Grace and Sacred Yintegrity work that’s part of the Full Moon.
• Our own Full-Moon focus is on Boundaries, Responsibility, and Relationship.

Which all fits together surprisingly well.  We could wrap it up thus…

This is a remarkable opportunity to Let Go of any and all Patterns, especially Relationship Patterns, that keep us from living out our Deepest Desires.  Not only are they up in our face, but there’s very strong Grace behind our Intentions.

The Ides of May

For now we see through a glass dimly.  Red Crystals of Proustite – Silver Arsenic Sulfide – in a bed of sparkly Silver Crystals.  Arsenic as a homeopathic can heal the nausea we feel when we’re caught in internal conflict.  While the sparkling Silver may represent our Pride in following our Values, the Proustite beams out the heat of our Passion, muted by the poison of our Self-Judgment.

Before we get into this next event we want to talk about, we need to remind that the next three weeks is about Grace, particularly around our ability to dissolve what appear to be problems (especially people problems) by stumbling into just the right balance of Expansion and Contraction, or Focus and Diffusion that enables us to suddenly see the World differently.  For instance, suppose we’ve been thinking that someone important to us is upset with us, and we’ve been struggling to find a way to make amends or explain ourself or promise to do better next time.  Then we encounter them unexpectedly, and discover that they aren’t upset with us at all, it was just our own Guilt or Abandonment acting up.

In a Both/And Universe, Expanded/Contracted and Focused/Diffuse are not opposites, so it may not be about trading one for the other.  Keep in mind that finding just the right balance may involve increasing or decreasing both.  You may find yourself becoming more Focused and more Diffuse, or less Contracted and less Expanded.  There isn’t much doingness going on here; this is more sort of a dumb-luck kind of Grace.  So any time you notice that you’re trying too hard (or, trying at all!) lighten up.  We’ve been working pretty hard so far this year; we can use the break.

Jupiter, Saturn, and Chiron form a Grand Trine till the end of May.

Not that our Yintegrity work doesn’t continue.  But it’s shifting.  We’ll now be examining our Limiting Beliefs, especially any Beliefs and Values that inhibit our ability to Love ourselves Unconditionally.  It’s not so much that doing this work will trigger Grace; it’s more that the natural background of Grace here will make it easier to do this work, and make the Alchemy a lot more profound.  

Think about your Deepest Desires.  There are good reasons why you haven’t been pursuing them, because they conflict with your Deepest Values.  You have to reject either your Desires or your Values, or both.  Or what’s most crazy-making, rejecting first one then the other and back again.  This is “Unconscious Despair” – we don’t even conceive that it might be possible to co-create a Reality that has room for both, let alone one that celebrates both. 

Well, guess what.  “Conflict” isn’t part of the objective World, it’s part of the Observer.  Our understanding of our Deepest Desires and our Deepest Values is limited.  When we Focus on Expanding our understanding of both, life-changing surprises await us.  Our Desires and Values don’t change, though they evolve.  But our understanding of them will change drastically. 

When you contemplate your Deepest Desires, there is a moment of Joy before your yes-buts kick in and you settle back into mediocrity.  When you contemplate your Deepest Values, you will probably meet either Pride (if you feel like you’re following them) or Shame (if you’re feeling like you aren’t).  Both Pride and Shame are Ego, not Values.  Neither indicates that you’re following your Values, they just indicate that you’re looking in the mirror and you like or dislike what you see.  When you’re following your Values, you just unthinkingly do the “right” thing.  You don’t anticipate reward or punishment or acclaim or disdain, you just do it.

You might be thinking that Honesty is a Deep Value of yours, but maybe you’re only looking at Fear of being accused of something.  When you examine your Pride and Shame you can start to tell the difference between Values and Ego, and deepen your understanding.  There is no room for self-rejection here.  We’re speaking of understanding from the Heart, not by the Mind.  We aren’t talking about Forgiveness, but the experience will feel similar, as if you’re Forgiving yourself. 

Using our normal three degrees of Sensitivity, Jupiter has already moved out of its Opposition to Pluto, breaking the T-Square, though Jupiter and Pluto are both still Square to Uranus.  In other words, if you’re more Sensitive, you’ll still very much feel it, though its strength will be diminished.  If you made any Life-Limiting Decisions (“I’ll never do that again” or “I’m not like that“) during the Grand Cross or the T-Square, those will continue to grieve you.

But meanwhile, we have a new T-Square, as Vesta (what we regard as Sacred) has backed into an Opposition to Uranus and a Square to Jupiter.  So instead of a Uranus T-Square with Pluto and Jupiter, we have a Jupiter T-Square with Uranus and Vesta.  so the basic question becomes…

How can I Expand into Living my Own Truth without violating the Sacred?

Meanwhile, Uranus is Initiating Venus.  The crossing takes most of the next week, and peaks around 5pm PDT on May 15, at 15 Aries: “A Native American weaving a ceremonial blanket.”  The Venus-Uranus Cycle takes about a year, so while this Consecration is highly charged by the Opposition to Vesta (and further amplified by the Square to Jupiter), the real consequences will take 6-9 months to work through.

We could hope that some of our most morally corrupt “leaders” will be caught in their own lies as a result.  We can certainly expect that we’ll be Challenged to Master our own Yintegrity more deeply. 

For review, Yintegrity means that we trust our Intincts, while Yangtegrity means that we keep our promises.  Yintegrity means we keep our most fundamental promise to ourself – Self-Trust.  Sure, renegotiate and make amends when you can’t keep a promise (and it might help to think about it before you make a commitment), but Yintegrity is the bottom line.  It means we’re in synch with our own Soul.

Early May Portals

You can find Zoisite inhabiting three of its main color ranges – the pink you see dominating here, the green around the edges, and the brown streaking the left center.  When you find a Zoisite that’s primarily green and pink, the two colors of the Heart Chakra, it’s called Thulite, and symbolizes Relationship.  By the way, most singlular Zoisite Crystals are brown, but when it makes a gemmy Crystal in blue and purple (depending on which angle you view it from), it’s called Tanzanite.  

 

1. Epiphanies

Early May is about Insight, mostly around how to distinguish between…

• What needs to Change so we can allow more of our True Self to come out into the World, 
• How our Limiting Beliefs need to Grow so we can Accept more of our True Self without squelching “It” (ie, Us), and
• How to Trust our Self more so we don’t have to spend so much time stuck in the mind trying to make it all into Either/Or.

While this Energy persists for a few weeks, it does have two distinct peaks…

• 6am PDT May 6 plus or minus a day or so, when the mind will be particularly active, and
• 8pm PDT May 7 plus or minus six hours or so, which should feel more Integrated and Integrating.

Notice that this is about what we need to Allow, not what we need to Do.  For most of May, the weekends are also strong peaks of this Energy. 

As we said earlier, “On May 6 Pluto is the focus of a Mjolnir with Pallas and Mercury, and on May 7 the Moon crosses Pallas and illuminates a Mjolnir with the Uranus-Pluto Square.”  Meanwhile, Mars has left the party, leaving a Uranus T-Square with Pluto and Jupiter.  So both Mjolnirs light up more of our Uranus-Pluto Yintegrity work.  The Moon lights up the T-Square May 3-4, May 11, May 17-18, and May 24.

 

2. Heiros Gamos

We also get some significant work on the dance between our Inner Male and Inner Female on May 10-11,

• Peaking around 4am PDT May 11 plus or minus a day or so. 

If you’re focused on Other Male or Other Female that weekend, knock it off; recognize that Other here is just acting out your internal dance for you so you can see it more clearly.  If that seems offensive to you, you’re on the right track, because bringing yourself out of Denial is what needs to happen.

Venus dances with the T-Square May 13-18, while Mars is Stationary Direct May 19.  But on May 10-11, Venus Opposes Mars while the Moon sits on Mars.  All of which is “just” further development of the Venus-Mars Cycle that began on Eris in April 2013.  As we said then…

• The Venus-Mars Initiation implies that they will be fed by Innocence (“A young girl feeding Birds in winter“).
• The Venus-Eris and Mars-Eris Initiations enshrine them in material form (“A pregnant woman in a light summer dress”).

 

3. And a Festival of Manifestation

After May 12 we enter a period of Grace where, “if we hold our mouth right” (as my father used to say) – or PIAVA it – we can allow our Perspective to shift radically, and begin Manifesting exactly what we want, especially with regard to Other.  The process will involve Focusing strongly on One Issue or Thing or Process, and letting all other issues or things or processes change and evolve to support the One Thing that we’re Focused upon. 

We’ll also need to suspend Disbelief, Let Go of who we Believe ourselves to be, and allow ourselves to become someone entirely new.  Normally that would freak out everyone around us, but they may be too busy transforming themselves to notice.  Of course it will freak us out if we notice that everyone around us is becoming someone else.  If you notice that, though, it just means you aren’t Focusing strongly enough on the One Most Important Thing, so wink at it and let it serve as a reminder to keep your eye on the road in front of you.  You’ll have plenty of time to get to know them in June.

The Jupiter-Saturn-Chiron Grand Trine comes into effect and hangs out with us for the rest of May.

Duir

This is fabulous…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zd_FiwA8w8

I haven’t watched the January-February-March Portals yet, but they’re probably every bit as spectacular!

Everybody Survive?

Red Tulips; design and photo by Nola Carmen

If you’re reaching for light switches on the wrong side of the door, or can’t remember how to operate the headlights in the car you’ve been driving for years, you know you’ve come out the other side of an Ego Death.  Congratulations.  We’re through the most intense period, so unless you’re still in Resistance or Denial, it should be downhill from here. 

The Grand Cross is “complete” – meaning all four of the Squares have peaked – Mars exactly Squared Jupiter, Opposed Uranus, and Squared Pluto on April 22-23.  Uranus exactly Squared Pluto on April 21.  Jupiter exactly Squared Uranus and Opposed Pluto on April 19-20.  And the Moon crossed Pluto and illuminated Everybody on April 20.

An Angle is most prominent, and increasingly so, during the three degrees leading up to the exact Angle, particularly during the last degree.  Then, once the Angle is exact, the impact tapers off rapidly.  Except…  If we aren’t Conscious about our experience of the Angle (ie, if we ignore the Teaching it offers), then we can make Decisions to Defend ourself against the impact of the Angle.  During the three degrees when the Angle is declining, it’s not the Angle that we contend with, but our Defensive Decisions.  Since they represent a Denial of Reality, one  way or another we need to adjust to the resulting Dissonance.

We aren’t done by any means.  Next weekend, April 26-27, will be a debriefing, where we review what the last few months have been about.  If we’re Conscious, we’ll see how we’ve changed.  Consciousness of Change isn’t necessary; sometimes “you trip out so far you never get back to know that you’ve left” as Kesey once put it.  Conscious or not, you’ll just be up and running confidently on your new version of your Mission by Mayday.

The Moon will cross Uranus and tickle Everybody again on April 26-27.  Mars exits the Grand Cross by April 29, and Jupiter by May 9 – that is, we’ll be dealing with any lingering Dissonance till May 9.

Of course we’ll have to contend with the April 28 Solar Eclipse first, but we’ll cover that in a separate post.

We’ll get some good Epiphanies in early May that will make us feel more comfortable with our understanding of what’s going on.

On May 6 Pluto is the focus of a Mjolnir with Pallas and Mercury, and on May 7 the Moon crosses Pallas and illuminates a Mjolnir with the Uranus-Pluto Square.

But the situation will improve drastically by May 12, when the Heavens conspire to help us out.

Jupiter swings into a Grand Trine with Saturn and Chiron, which endures for the rest of May.

Dropping Our Masks I

With our usual three degrees of Sensitivity, the Big Event of late Winter and early Spring of 2014 starts January 30, when Retrograde Jupiter backs into a T-Square with Uranus and Pluto, emphasis on Uranus.   The T-Square hangs around till May 9.  In the northern hemisphere, the T-Square brackets the Spring Equinox, running from Imbolc or Brigid – the Pagan celebration of the Return of the Light, to Mayday or Beltane – the celebration of Estrus…

From Brigid (February 1) to Beltane (May 1) we’ll be Challenged to Drop our Masks and “let it all hang out,” as we were wont to say in the ’60s.  For most of us most of the time this means letting go of being “Nice” and being Honest instead.  That’s not really the tradeoff, but it feels like that’s the tradeoff.  Suppose you want to spend less time with someone but don’t want to tell them, for fear of hurting their feelings.  There must be fifty ways to be honest about that without being hurtful. 

PIAVA that you’ll come up with several creative ways to keep an excellent Acquaintance Relationship with the people who you like but you don’t have time to be Good Friends with.  Think about the best networkers you know, the folks who still have positive contact with almost everyone they’ve ever met or known.  Not all of them do that by always being “Nice.”  Some of them do that by always being Authentic.  Any Judgments in your quiver about good networkers?  Maybe time to trace those back to their source and love them into oblivion?   

So we’re basically looking at a Compulsion (Pluto) to Expand (Jupiter) our Yintegrity (Uranus).  Just to review, Yangtegrity is doing what we said we were going to to, so folks can depend on us.  But Yintegrity is doing what we feel like doing, moment to moment.  Now, in order to survive in a World that’s mostly still Yangtegrity – though changing – we’ll probably have to reduce our Commitments and be willing to Renegotiate our Agreements when our Yintegrity makes unexpected shifts.  And even occasionally Make Amends when the shift is too sudden for Renegotiation.  With practice we’ll get very efficient at Renegotiating our Agreements and Making Amends, especially as we substitute Authentic for “Nice.”

Remembering that we want to be Authentic-and-not-hurtful rather than “Nice.”   Using “I-Statements” helps a lot.  Talking about your own Feelings helps too, as long as you remember that “I Feel like…” is an interpretation (a thought, actually) and not a Feeling.  “I Feel…” has to have an Emotion as it’s object, not a suppositional phrase.  “I Feel upset when X occurs!” rather than “I Feel like you did X to hurt me!”

It feels like (this is a thought) we’re going to be Compelled in the New socioeconomic Paradigm to make our way in the World by Doing what we Love.  Or Yintegrity will get awfully difficult, especially for Introverts. 

This is an interesting example of Yintegrity within Community…

http://www.wired.com/business/2014/01/zappos-tony-hsieh-las-vegas/

It’s a cross between an updated version of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and Watermelon Sugar.  I’ll bet Tom Wolfe is already working on the book.

Being Authentic isn’t anything like being Political or Diplomatic.  The latter is all about being very careful not to surrender any Power to Other.  The former is about being Vulnerable.  It would probably be a good idea to PIAVA that, when you explore Expanded Authenticity, you become more Vulnerable AND more Safe.  Both/And.  Boundaries are a double-edged sword.  They keep you Safe from Others who are hurtful, but in their guise as Edges, they have to Expand in order to allow you to distinguish between Others who are hurtful, and your own Oversensitivities. 

When you feel hurt, is it because Other is naively touching an old wound of yours that you need to Embrace and Heal?  Or maybe because you’re using words differently, as often happens between generations, families, neighborhoods, and subcultures?  Or because they enjoy hurting people?  You may not be sufficiently intrigued or interested in this particular Other to take the time to find out.  So you need to PIAVA fifty ways to remove yourself from the situation efficiently, without being hurtful.

The guideline I use, not because I read it anywhere but because it’s what experience taught me about what’s useful, is to attend to Boundaries first, and Edges second.  When you feel pain arising in an interaction, excuse yourself.  Don’t get Vulnerable when you aren’t Safe.  A trip to the washroom is a good neutral situation-breaker, mood-changer, and subject-changer.  While you’re there you can attend to your Edges – 

Hmm, what am I Feeling and why?  Is this my wound, or their aggression?  Or both?

Could well be both – even if it’s your wound, don’t get Vulnerable when it’s not completely Safe to do so, and only when you Want to invest your scarce Time and Energy and Attention in the transaction.  Otherwise, get off the bus, Gus.  Just tell them your mother called while you were in the loo, and you have to get home post haste. 

Authenticity doesn’t mean you have to be Honest in the sense of betraying yourself to avoid contusion with Other.  It means being Honest with yourself about your True Desires and Preferences, putting your own agenda ahead of everyone else’s.  Your Honesty is situational – the Safer you are with someone, the more Vulnerable you can be.  If you aren’t Safe, a lie isn’t a transgression, it’s a Boundary.

Once you’ve been Loving and Gentle with any old wounds and adjusted your Edges, if you still think it’s worth your Time to interact, you can adjust your Boundaries (making them softer or harder, depending on your deliberation), and explore further.  If you need to recruit a friend to maintain your absolute Safety, by all means do so. 

Safety First. 

Without Safety, even if you succeed in stretching your Edges, any degree of trauma will snap them back tighter than they were before you started. 

Use the same strategy when you’re approaching someone you want to explore.  Like training a wild animal.  Offer a boon, then withdraw to a distance that seems Safe for them, but stay available.  Rinse and repeat, as many times as necessary.

There are several other things going on besides the Uranus T-Square, including a Tricolor with Pallas – which conveniently symbolizes Boundaries and Edges – and an intriguing new Quintile Configuration we haven’t found a good name for yet.  We’ll cover those in Part II.  Wouldn’t hurt to look at the Jupiter-Pluto and Jupiter-Uranus Cycles too, to see what it is that we’re working on.

Plus the New Moon at 20 minutes before 2pm PST January 30 will Sextile Uranus and create a Pallas Yod…

Which will be a great opportunity to practice our finesse with our Boundaries and Edges!  Choosing which to work on when, making the Choice quickly and Instinctively (that part is important – Boundaries are what Instincts are for!), and making Safety paramount.  Then practicing strengthening our Boundaries, and Expanding our Edges, in turn.

We should probably also begin to ruminate on what it means that all this action occurs at 10-14 of the Cardinal Signs.  Just for starters, we can say that if your birthday is in early April, early July, early October, or early January, you can expect significant Trance Reformation by the time we get to High Summer.  But it’ll impact a lot of other birthdays too.  Maybe we should save this for Part IV.

The Mystic Rectangle that we’ve already talked about hangs in there till February 6, and the Chiron-Juno Mjolnir is with us until April 2.  Those are both Big – even while we give the Uranus T-Square it’s due, we don’t want to discount those powerful Energies.  We’ll review those in Part III, when we dissect the Venus Station that’s coming up at 1pm PST on January 31.

So you can do some advance planning – to attack, retreat, or avoid – if you need to…

• The February 6 Mercury Station is Decile – Tenth Harmonic – to Uranus, and its February 28 Station Septiles Uranus.
• The Jupiter Station in late February-early March will set the T-Square afire.  There’s other action galore in that time frame as well – Stations of Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, and a New Moon on Chiron, for starters.
• The Uranus-Juno Initiation of mid-March (peaking around March 26) will be huge.
• A New Moon on Uranus March 30.
• For the last couple weeks of April, Mars backs into an Opposition to Uranus and transforms the T-Square into a Grand Cross.
• In mid-April Pluto goes Stationary during a Lunar Eclipse Opposite Eris, within a few days of when Uranus, Pluto, Jupiter, and Mars are all making exact Angles to one another.

All of these will make for some very powerful Changes – personally, socially, and Globally.  We’ll be giving these, and their many permutations, a lot of Attention over the next few months.  Like the old Chinese curse – May you be born in interesting times.