Busy August V

“Just when we begin to feel expert and comfortable, that is exactly when the nature of life’s restless heart forces us to move completely out of that previously comfortable era into one in which we are hopelessly inexpert.  In every stage it is as if we have to learn how to live all over again.  Though normal and unavoidable, often these natural life changes can be experienced as deep losses…

“The grief of raising children who are golden original mind-boggling beautiful sprites who become teenagers who hate us and want to get as far away from us as possible, or the grief of watching those same kids become adults as limited, afraid, and rigid as we are… are just a few of the stages of living filled with grief that are totally expected.

“For this reason, though natural, common, and anticipated, it is also just as right that we should deeply express these changes as losses through grief.  For this reason, in most of the world’s natural cultures, these changes are understood and experienced tribally as lines that must be crossed ritually with the help of the entire village…

“Natural culture doesn’t need to address life changes with therapy because they anticipate these changes and have a place for the grief.  These rituals of life changes are the major parts of their tribal everyday spiritual existence.  In this way grief is not left hanging but is converted into ritual beauty and culture-supporting continuity, which is not only experienced by the people in a massive communal way, but in a massive communal way these rituals also have the people giving life back to the Divine that gives life to them and the world.”

–Martín Prechtel, The Smell of Rain on Dust, pp.9-10.

Folks of our ilk may so Celebrate the Solstices and Equinoxes, and maybe even the Cross-Quarter Days.  But the sort of Celebrations that Martín describes are less common, and more important.  And it reminds us that one Loss we often Fear but seldom Grieve is Ego Death.  Astrology schedules Ego Deaths for us frequently – such as this week.

The symbol for our Soul (Uranus) and the symbol for Expansion (Jupiter) are both Strong (Stationary) on 11 August, and the impact of the Expansion part is greatly amplified (Jupiter Stations in front of the mid-Sagittarius “Great Attractor” and the “Shapley Supercluster,” two Galaxy Clusters, one behind the other, both mostly behind the Milky Way, and each stronger than the previous, that pull all of us toward them with a Gravitational Force thousands of times that of the Milky Way itself).

In other words, you can say, “Oh, No Thanks!” but it won’t much help.

With our Uranian Soul symbol in the Sign of Matter (Taurus), we’ve recently begun a seven-year period that we can safely call The Descent of Soul into Matter.  Soul is Asking us to Expand a great deal beyond our usual day-to-day Limitations and Habits.  Just as an example, Soul is immortal, so while it may be Compassionate, it doesn’t have the Fear of Death that “we” – our Egos – have.  So we have to Expect that it will show us pictures of Death, in a “gentle” attempt to help us move closer to Recognizing our Immortality as Souls.

Energy precedes Matter, so if we continue to Project Demise and Fear of it out in front of us, more Death is what we’ll Create.

No question that it’s usually inconvenient to have to Surrender a Lifetime where we undoubtedly have Unfinished Business, but even in that circumstance we can reframe the Ego’s Intention as helping us to move closer to Recognizing what’s Really Important – our Ego’s education! That’s a lot more important than any Unfinished Business.  It’s the inept Political notion of Karma as Retribution that leads to the conclusion that Unfinished Business weighs us down.  Sure, we can rue Unfinished Business and thus make Karma out of it, but that’s just a different Curriculum we can Choose.

But Martín is right that All Losses Must Be Grieved, and every Ego Death is a Loss.  Rather than Respectfully and Gratefully Grieve our Ego Deaths after the fact, we usually Burn Up the same Energy in Fear before the fact.  We can Feel it coming on, and the Ego starts pedaling backwards as fast as it can.  We Expect a huge Soul Download over the next several days.  Open to it.  Invite it.

Invite your Transition to be Loving and Gentle, and Ask your Current Ego to Respond to it with Respect, Gratitude, Surrender, and Relief.  Remind your Current Ego that it’s done a fabulous job of Keeping You Alive (its job description) so far, remind it that it can Trust the Soul to do a great job of selecting a bright-eyed Happy New You for the next assignment, and give it one last Hug.

In fact, Trusting the Soul is the biggest Challenge this week (asteroid Eurydike [Trust] Square Stationary Uranus).  And the basic process is all about Manifesting Miracles into Form by Following our Inner Voices (dwarf planet Makemake [Manifestation] Opposite Chiron [Despair/Miracles] and at the Focus of a Finger of God from the Sextile between Uranus itself and dwarf planet OR10 [Intrusive Memories])…

We may have to be tricky to Hear the Voices (OR10) – Sitting Silently with our Eyes closed and Shushing the mind, for instance, or Clearing our Current-Moment Thoughts and Paying Attention to Random Memories or Stories that cross our mind – maybe a plot from last week’s TV show, a Stranger you passed today who reminded you of someone, a Strange but somehow familiar Smell, or a sudden Memory of a tale your favorite Aunt told you when you were but a golden original mind-boggling beautiful sprite yourself.

Don’t Strain – the Stories and Voices are meant to Trigger your Intuition, so making it Stressful will just clamp the tubing.  You Want only Joy and Fun here; certainly your Soul wound Want it that way.  Be continually Mindful for Bummers, and Poor-Sweetheart them or Tap them Out.  When Bummers arise, know that they’re Up so you can Let Go of them (Chiron). 

If no Bummers arise, Look for them!  We all have Beliefs that we Accept as Just the Way It Is (Chiron), and those are the fences that keep us as limited, afraid, and rigid as we are.  But we Accept them as Just the Way It Is, so we aren’t Aware that they keep us Limited, Afraid, and Rigid.  When we Open those Windows, Miracles await just beyond the Pane.

Jupiter will be Lighting Up our natal planets in the neighborhood of 15 Degrees, and Uranus those in the vicinity of 7 Degrees.

Remembering Who We Are

We’ve been very successful at times in Living a 5th-Dimension Life, where our Intentions Manifest Effortlessly, where we’re in the Right Place at the Right Time to Dance with Miracles, where disparate parts of our Life mesh together well to produce Synchronistic Synergies, where the Threads that we Weave entwine the Threads that other people and Nature Weave to Create a Tapestry of Pleasure.  Ram Dass used to say “I know you’re in Bliss, Sunshine, but it’s your turn to do the dishes!”  Here it’s “Those dirty dishes, Dripping with Love, are Calling my Name!” instead.

The next trick is to Transform this occasional-to-frequent Gift into Full Time, and that’s exactly what today’s Full Moon Graces us with…

The Full Moon makes a T-Square with asteroids Ceres (Sustainability) and Mnemosyne (Memory), which are also the Focus of a Finger of God.  A T-Square and a Finger of God Focused on the same point produce a Diamond Star, which means, This is what would normally be a Challenge, but the Force is with us to make this Challenge Effortless.

We’ll Feel the Challenge to Remember to inject Sustainability into All of our Actions and Thoughts as more of a gentle Reminder than a nagging Frustration.

The Grace-full roots of the Diamond Star (the feet of the Finger of God) are Neptune (Synchrony) and Stationary Lachesis (Choice) on one side, and on the other Chariklo (Self-Confidence) and Juno (the Edges of Consciousness).

A Diamond Star makes four sixths of a Grand Sextile, which symbolizes Effortless Co-Creation.  The Full Moon chart includes the other two points to complete the Grand Sextile.  Orcus (Pattern-Breaking) is one, and the Fixed Star Canopus is the other.  One of Canopus’s duties as the Great Southern Navigator is to Ferry the Dead to the Underworld.

The Ego doesn’t look forward to being Ferried to the Underworld.  But if we have a good Guide to take us over to the Other Side, we can Enjoy an Expired Timeline as a Skill in the Bank, rather than a Life Rued.  When we look at Death Constructively, as, say, Steven Levine does, then it’s not Death that we Rue, it’s Death that’s Unforgiven and Unforgiving.  Every Finished Timeline is an Arrow in our Quiver of Skills.  It’s our Held Emotions, Unforgiven and Unforgiving, that make them into Self-Sabotaging Karma and the Veil that keeps our inherited Skill Bank behind the Veil of Unconsciousness.

The Star Canopus is only visible south of a line connecting San Francisco, Wichita, Richmond, Seville, Catania, Corinth, Rasht, Ashgabat, Wakhan, Jinan, Seoul, and Iwaki.  In Brady’s Book of the Fixed Stars, Bernadette doesn’t count Stars that are behind the Veil of Darkness.  But to us, those are the most important players, because they lead us to the Secret Laces that sew us back together.  So to us, the presence of the South Pole Star Canopus in our Grand Sextile is a special Gift of priceless and enduring Value.

The Shadow side of the chart is drawn in light lines – three interlocking Mjölnirs on the two Squares in the T-Square and the (undrawn) Square from Chiron (Healing Self-Rejection) to Saturn-Pholus-Ixion (The Most Important Thing is Responding to the Needs of Our Hidden Genius, especially their Need to Express and Create).  Saturn-Pholus-Ixion Conjoins the Galactic Center (This Is Not Optional).

Of course it’s not a Shadow at all, since Mjölnirs are about Epiphany, Insight.  Mjölnirs are Shadows Illuminated.  One of them points to – what else but – Ceres-Mnemosyne, compounding the already strong emphasis on that corner of the Full Moon chart.  The other two Mjölnirs point directly to the two feet of the first – Chiron and Saturn-Pholus-Ixion.

So a complex-looking chart turns out to be very tightly coordinated, and very accurately aimed toward Illumination of the path to our Permanent Ascendance.  We aren’t north of Wichita any more.  What will bring us back down hard into 3D?  Doubt, Fear.  Cut them off at the pass with Cancel-Neutralize-Upgrade or Revert! or Tapping.  Karma is dead.  Without muscle tone, it can’t grab us.  In Truth it never did, we grabbed it, because we were afraid of the Infinite Unknown.  But in 5D, the Infinite Unknown is our Best Friend, Constant Companion, and Greatest Benefactor.

I’m struck by the parallel between 5D Reality and the Design Principles of Permaculture…

https://permacultureprinciples.com/

Sautern I

By now it should be abundantly Clear what The Most Important Thing in your Life is at this Time, as at 10pm PDT, in a couple of hours, Saturn reverses course to recross the Libra snd Virgo Duads of Sagittarius.

A Duad is two and a half degrees, or one twelfth of a Sign.

Of course Saturn begins this Reconsideration from smack dab on the Galactic Center, so most of what you’re Focused Upon is probably not Personal, but Galactic.  Think about that; sure, you Experience it as though it is Personal, but if it has a lot in common with what other people are Experiencing, is it Really Personal?

It makes a difference.  If you were the only unemployed person in town, for instance, you might start looking for a job or start a business.  But if two thirds of the folks in your town were unemployed, you’d probably Realize that what you need to do is to help increase Community, Self-Sufficiency, and Resilience.  Even if you’re unemployed “by choice,” is it because you’re the only one in town with the Guts and Pespective to Opt Out of an economic regime that serves only a very few, at the expense of the very many?

Conveniently, the Virgo and Libra Duads of Sagittarius are about Breaking Down the Ego so it can Meet Other.  Well, not many things are more “Other” than The Impersonal.  We usually think of Other as “Other People,” but you can also think of it as “Other than the Individual Ego.”  Community is a big part of Other.  You can see Community as your friends (FB or Real), your town, your country, your Species, your Galaxy, or Consciousness in General, including the Critters, the Plants, the Rocks, and the Stars.

Sagittarius as a whole is about Letting Go, and of course Saturn is about The Most Important Thing.  So we can say, without exaggeration or understatement, that The Most Important Thing These Days Is to Let Go of Our Old Notions about What’s Me and What’s Not.  That’s a very big assignment, with an almost infinite number of subcategories to choose from.  Think back over the last couple of days – which subcategory has been foremost in your Experience?

Communique From HQ 1

The Centaur Pholus was a busy fellow.  He was sort of a bigwig among the Centaurs, and during his Big Story, he was airbnb-ing Hercules while the latter was out hunting down everybody who was anybody in the Matriarchy.  While Pholus was out, Herk rummaged around in Pholus’s stash and found the Sacred Wine that had been put in Pholus’s charge.  Well, Herk popped the cork and helped himself, and the other Centaurs could smell the Sacred Wine a mile away and charged into Pholus’s digs.  In the resulting riot, Hercules killed many Centaurs, and wounded Chiron.  After the riot, while preparing Centaurs for burial, Pholus was killed when he pricked himself with one of Hercules’s poison arrows.

So if we’re looking to Blame, Pholus’s Death was caused by Hercules’s theft, though Herk wasn’t the one who actually “pulled the trigger.”  It was more of a negligent homicide, though we could also think of it as an armed robbery of sorts, and in many locales, if someone gets killed as a result of an armed robbery, I belief an ambitious prosecutor could charge Herk with murder.

If we look to Responsibility on the other hand – how to change future outcomes for the better – what do we find?  Pholus and Hercules were friends, so Pholus perhaps should have known that Herk was a lush.  If Pholus had kept his stash hidden or securely locked up, we could have avoided the whole sordid affair.  So we think of the astrological Pholus as having to do with Taking Full Responsibility For or Being Fully Responsible To, with the caveat that we aren’t talking about Blame.

For the next few days, Pholus is the Star of the Show.  The Galactic Center (aka Headquarters) Initiated Pholus in early February 2016, and they Conjoined again in mid-May.  Got any leftover Unfinished Business from those dates?  It could be pretty important to tidy up any loose ends around it.  Interesting timing for the US Electoral College.  Was there anything stolen around that?

As you can see in the calendar below, we still have a lot to cover; in Purple,

• The influence of Quaoar (He Who Provides the Technology for Survival) 
• The Solstice (The Results of our Pholus Drama are with us for a Year)  

And 

• The Green (The Most Important Thing is to Let Go of our old Limited notions about Healing and about Possibility) 
• and Blue (Having Healed a Load of our History with Abuse and Limitation, we’re Free to Manifest Abundantly)

Energies are already well within our range of Sensitivity.

• 15 December:
  • 10am PST Varuna returns to Cancer
  • 1pm PST Ixion Initiates Sun, 25 Sagittarius
• 18 December:
  • 6am PST Pholus Initiates Sun, 28 Sagittarius, An old bridge.
  • 7am PST Galactic Center Initiates Sun, 28 Sagittarius
• 19 December, 1pm PST Pholus Conjunct Galactic Center
• 20 December, 5am PST Quaoar Initiates Sun, 30 Sagittarius
• 21 December, 3am PST Solstice
• 22 December: OR10 (11am PST) and Nessus (2pm PST) Initiate Mars, 3 Pisces
• 25 December, 6pm PST Hylonome Initiates Sun, 5 Capricorn
• 26 December, 11am PST Jupiter Opposite Uranus, 21 Libra-Aries
• 27 December:
  • 4am PST Saturn Initiates Nemesis, 21 Sagittarius
  • noon PST Nemesis Square Chiron, 21 Sagittarius-Pisces
  • 5pm PST Nemesis Opposite Chaos, 22 Sagittarius-Gemini
• 28 December: 
  • 2pm PST Saturn Waning Square Chiron, 22 Sagittarius-Pisces
  • 9pm PST Saturn Opposite Chaos, 22 Sagittarius-Gemini
  • 11pm PST New Moon, 8 Capricorn
• 29 December: 
  • 2am PST Uranus Stationary Direct, 21 Aries
  • 7am PST Chiron Waning Square Chaos, 22 Pisces-Gemini
  • 7pm PST Chariklo Initiates Sun, 9 Capricorn
• 1 January 2017, 12am PST (!) Makemake Stationary Retrograde, 4 Libra

Lifespan of an Ego

The big event here is a Retrograde Station of asteroid Lachesis (Lak’-e-sis) on 28 April.  The Mythological Lachesis was one of the three Fates, the one who measured the span of a Life.  I’m guessing you’ve recently been busy revising your estimates of how long you may Live.

In this Shadow Period (the span of a Retrogradation) between 22 Sagittarius and 4 Capricorn that lasts until early August, Lachesis backs over Quaoar (Law-Giver), Pholus (Responsibility), the Galactic Center (Headquarters) and Ixion (Abandoned Genius).  It’s already crossed them once, and it will cross them thrice before we’re done.  The first crossing is called a “Can-Opener” because it often opens a Can of Worms you hadn’t been thinking about.

• The Lachesis-Ixion Can-Opener occurred on 27 February.  We were probably looking at Limitations in our Lives and Wondering how to Overcome them.
• The Lachesis-Pholus Can-Opener happened on 11 March, and was probably about Realizations that we can no longer ignore certain Self-Sabotaging elements in our approach to Life.
• The Lachesis-Quaoar Can-Opener was 18 March.  That was probably about revising our estimations of how long we can Survive on this Planet – collectively and individually – without extreme Changes to our Lifestyle and to our basic attitude toward the Soul of the Planet,

Check your journals.  The involvement of the Galactic Center makes these reconsiderations a great deal more consequential than they otherwise would be.  This section of the Zodiac – the end of Sagittarius – has been lit up strongly for several years, and not by accident.  This is the Scorpio zone (“Duad” in astrologuese) of Sagittarius, and the message is very clearly

What is it that I need to Let Go of, but which I’m clinging to so tightly?

It’s past time, Change is afoot, and your old approach won’t work any more, no matter how well it’s served you over the years.  Ask yourself that question, and reconsider the answer you’ve already rejected.  Or, if that’s not clear as a bell, omit the question mark and make it a Wondering, surrendering the question to your Intuition.  That’s a better approach anyway.

The Bottom Line is that it IS possible for us to reboot our Civilizations.  But we have to Listen to what’s really going on instead of gripping our Denial, we need to be Proactive about the Changes we need to make, and we need to Respect one another’s Unique Contributions, Trusting that their Intuition is correct for them, no matter how dumb it looks to us.  We look just as dumb to them, and ALL Contributions are necessary.

We could easily encounter major Ego Deaths here.  Remember to translate “It feels like I’m DYING!” to  “It feels like I’M dying.”  We cannot differentiate between “us” and our Ego – Ego Are Us.  So of course an Ego Death feels like a Physical Death.  But you’ll have thousands of Ego Deaths for every Physical Death, and the faster you can recognize that happening, the sooner you can begin constructively building a new Ego.  They aren’t optional.

When we talk about Ego we aren’t talking about being Selfish or Self-Absorbed.  We’re talking about our basic Survival Instinct.  We need enough Selfishness and Self-Absorption to keep ourself Safe, and to make sure that we always see ourselves as Worthy of Safety and Survival.  Those are critical distinctions; whenever you sense any Unworthiness in yourself around Safety and Survival, it’s a red flag to get Selfish and Self-Absorbed.  It’s not optional.

Lachesis has been within one Degree of its Station – in other words, basically Standing Still and therefore Strong – since 10 April.  If you aren’t a different person now than you were on 9 April, you will be soon.  Take it as an Opportunity.

Mercury is also turning Retrograde on 28 April.  It backs over asteroid Vesta (Unconscious Beliefs), giving us the opportunity to become Aware of our Limiting Beliefs.  Awareness is a prerequisite to Change.  Mercury’s Shadow Period is 15-24 Taurus and 28 April-22 May.  This section of Taurus (Scorpio through Aquarius Duads) is about re-examining what we’ve been Creating, and adapting it to the Good of All.  We can no longer afford Competition, lest we All go down fighting with one another.  Everything we do must now be Collaborative, and directed toward Sustainability.

Portal 24-29.3 – Saturn et al Stationary I

The influence of a planet is Strongest when it’s Stationary.  Being Stationary is much more significant than whether a planet is turning Retrograde or Direct.  There’s no shortage of Stationary planets over the next week…

• 24 March 5am PDT, dwarf planet Ixion Stationary Retrograde, 25 Sagittarius – our Abandoned Genius
• 25 March…
  • 2am PDT, asteroid Klotho Stationary Direct, 15 Leo ( Trine to Saturn) – Assembling the Foundation of a New Life
  • 3am PDT, Saturn Stationary Retrograde, 17 Sagittarius – Pay Attention to The Most Important Thing
• 26 March 6am PDT, Centaur Pholus Stationary Retrograde, on the Galactic Center at 28 Sagittarius – Taking Full Responsibility (NOT Blame)
• 29 March…
  • 1pm PDT, dwarf planet Quaoar Stationary Retrograde, 30 Sagittarius – Decisions with Survival Value (or NOT)
  • 5pm PDT, asteroid Sappho Stationary Direct, 12 Leo (Conjunct Klotho) – Celebrating Love

Depending on your Sensitivity, the influence of a Station will be prominent for about a week for the outer planets (Ixion, Saturn, Pholus, Quaoar), and several days for the asteroids (Klotho, Sappho), so the exact times may be less relevant, though you may feel a definite shift as each millstone is passed.

With this many planets rallying at once, expect Massive Confusion.  Multiplying the cacophony, this will light up all of your birth planets between 11 and 18 Degrees, and between 24 Degrees and the following Cusp.  Not many of us will have no planets in these ranges.

This is all Fire Energy, Sagittarius and Leo.  The Buddhists say, “into the Fire, out in the Water,” meaning that if you’re planning to Journey with Spirit – or if Spirit is planning to Journey with you, as is obviously the case here – expect to be Cleansed Emotionally.

We can build an overview by interpreting the equivalent of an Ixion-Saturn-Pholus-Quaoar Stellium: The Most Important Thing this week will be Taking Full Responsibility for the Survival Value of our Abandoned Genius.  Responsibility isn’t Blame, it’s Being Able to Respond rather than React.  It looks to the Future, not the Past (as Blame does).  With Pholus Stationary on the Galactic Center, the Responsibility element is Cosmic.

There’s a very high probability that your Abandoned Genius is socially unacceptable, and accordingly may well be hiding behind Shame or Guilt.  If Shame arises here, Pay Attention – what you’re Ashamed of is probably a (very primitive) version of your Unique Genius.  “Retarded” is a word that may fit, since we haven’t been able to Enjoy or Practice or Mature our Genius since it was Shamed into Abandonment.  

There may also be a shred of appropriate Guilt involved, as in rare cases we may have been Shamed for Abusive behavior on the part of our Unique Genius.  Many children develop their Social Values only with coaching.  Suppose for instance that your Unique Genius is Salesmanship.  As is prominently displayed in the US these days, some people never developed Social Values around Salesmanship, and will say anything to make a sale – Truth is no issue at all.  

If you were caught selling Magic Gravel to the neighbor kids at age four and Shamed for it, your Salesmanship may still be underground, and still at a four-year-old level of development.  As badly as the Planet needs people to sell the ideas of Community, Sustainability, Equality, Justice, and Ecological Responsibility, we can’t afford to keep your Salesmanship under wraps.  In order to pull off the blanket you’ll need to Lovingly Embrace your Shamed four-year-old, and have great Patience as you grow her retarded development into an adult Skill.

As Dr. Kim says, there are no negative Emotions, only negative Reactions to an Emotion.  Even Shame.  The Most Important Thing is to be Loving and Gentle with any and all Feelings which arise.  It’ll help to – “You poor Sweetheart…” – Empathize with your Self at the age when you were Overwhelmed by your original Feelings (a good example of how Overwhelm can stall Personal Growth for years – or decades).  

Children, new to Egos, are very easily Overwhelmed.  Good parenting involves protecting children from Overwhelm, not contributing or even creating it.  Unfortunately, most parents are simply mindlessly passing along the consequences of the Overwhelm that they suffered as Children, or the Overwhelm that their great great grandparents suffered.  It’s up to us to Heal this.

August-September VIII

Tumbled samples of the Mineral Jet, also known as Coal.  Isn’t Coal the ultimate in Manifestation?  A reminder that the road to Joy runs through Gratitude.

  Ω    Ω    Ω    Ω    Ω 

We’ve postulated that we’re being Ordered by the Galactic Command Center to Grieve the Loss of Unearned Privilege, or better yet, to celebrate the Loss as the Initiation of a Vision Quest to Retrieve an orphaned portion of our True Selves.  And we’re also being Asked to Take Full Responsibility to be Loving with the parts of ourself which we previously rejected as unfit for polite company.  Not Blame – which looks backwards to attempt to Understand Causes, but Responsibility – which looks forward to attempt to improve Outcomes.  Bear in mind that Ego Death, while it Feels like “I am dying,” it’s actually “I am dying,” to make room for an Expanded sense of Identity.

We’re gifted with enormous Grace here, but we’re also given an assignment, to be Courageously Loving with ourself as we work through whatever “I’d-rather-die-than-go-through-that-again” Karma we come up against.  If we could just Grow the Ego without pain, we probably would have done it a long time ago.  But we have Limiting Beliefs, Beliefs that the World is a certain way, and that certain avenues are Verboten to us.  If those Limits are still Painful to us, we’re better off than if we’ve accepted those Limits as “just the way thing are.”  If they’re still Painful, we can Empathize with our Self in the Pain, and break through surprisingly easily. 

“You poor Sweetheart, you’re really in Pain here, aren’t you,” we say to ourself.  That immediately shifts our Identity, and we no longer are the Pain, we’re Witnessing the Pain.  As Mother Teresa so skillfully demonstrated for us, we can Compassionately Witness Anything, no matter how horrible.  We don’t need to go to the slums or prison camps to Practice what Mother Teresa was Teaching us by example, we just need to be Compassionate with ourself when we’re in great Pain.  Karmically, after all, much of our great Pain was developed in slums and prison camps and their equivalents. 

It’s part of the program that we forget that we came here to Heal the Pain, not to indulge it.  We first Identify with it, in order to Embrace it completely when we do Heal it.  Once we Embrace it completely, we retire it, and afterwards there is less Pain in the World.  Our role on the planet is to be vacuum cleaners of Pain.

I’m not projecting that early September will be a time of great Pain, though as always, for some it will be.  What I’m suggesting is that if it is a time of great Pain for you, Witnessing your Pain will begin the process of Healing and Integration.

We’ve chosen September 5 (6pm PDT, http://www.jbuss.com/tt/pdt18.htm ) as the poster child for the early-September Stellium of Stations, because at that time the Moon Conjoins the dwarf planet Chaos (Unlimited Potential, not Disorder), which Opposes the Stellium.  The Moon is often the trigger for bringing Energy into Form, as Manifestation into Matter is one of the major functions of Lunar Energy.  The prominence of Chaos opens the door to Unlimited Transformation.  The Stations themselves fan out like this…

• 4 September – Ixion Stationary Direct (SD) 22 Sagittarius
• 5 September – Chariklo SD 28 Sagittarius
• 6 September – Pholus SD 23 Sagittarius and Venus SD 15 Leo
• 7 September – Hylonome SD 29 Sagittarius
• 9 September – Quaoar SD 27 Sagittarius

As we’ve said, the Venus Station is Trioctile (Compassionate Adjustment) to the Hylonome, Pholus, and Quaoar Stations, and to the Galactic Center.

The Grace arises primarily from a Grand Trine formed by the Stellium, Mars, and the approaching Uranus-Eris Conjunction.  While Uranus-Eris won’t hatch until next June, it involves the Soul (Uranus) demanding that we Reveal to ourself some major elements of the Self, which we’ve been Denying (Eris), while Mars (who was after all Eris’s brother) means War if we don’t oblige.  Denial, recall, is a healthy psychological function, allowing us to focus in situations where we’d otherwise be overwhelmed.  But Denial has an ending date stamped on it, and it’s coming up.

While the Stellium Stations span 4 through 9 September, we can reasonably expect that we’ll experience them most strongly starting a week prior – that is, now.  Once we get past 9 September, this Energy should drop off fairly rapidly, unless we’ve tried to Understand, made Decisions, and cemented the Energy into Form.

More Grace arises from the dwarf planet Haumea, which turns the Grand Trine into a Kite focused on Haumea, promising Rebirth if we navigate the shoals efficiently.  We’ve dealt with this Kite before, when Jupiter sat in the position that Mars now occupies.  Conveniently, Mars will fill this corner of the Grand Trine and Kite from 4 September till 12 September.

The implication is that we may be Feeling the Sturm und Drang of the Stations for the next several days without the Grace, which may not kick in until 4 September.  If we’ve already personalized the Pain by then, we may not even be able to Notice the Grace.

The dwarf planet Chaos makes a second Kite with the Grand Trine, adding yet more Grace and the promise of Unlimited Growth.  When a Grand Trine is supplemented by two Kites, it forms five out of six points of an enormously beneficial Grand Sextile, making the Vacancy at the sixth point arguably the most important point in the chart.  As a Vacancy, it’s up to us to provide that Energy to complete the Grand Sextile.  A Sextile, recall, promises Grace, but only after we take the first step toward What We Want.  The Vacancy is 21 Aquarius, “A disappointed and disillusioned woman courageously faces a seemingly empty life.“

Hence the threat of Pain, and the importance that we provide the Courageous Response to it.  If we’ve resigned ourself to Believing that our Limiting Beliefs are facts about the external World, then we will have to break through that mental fog before we can deal with the Pain – hence it might actually be easier if we’re experiencing Pain.

We know exactly how to deal with disappointment and disillusionment, don’t we.  We usually use the words Discouragement and Despair instead, but we’re obviously talking about Chiron here, and how Chiron transforms Despair into Miracles by opening our eyes to new Perspectives which make the “problems” we’re Despairing about simply disappear.  If we ignore for a moment the environmental disasters that fracking can create, for instance, fracking is a Chironean response to the “problems” of Peak Oil – suddenly and unexpectedly we’re awash in cheap oil (making Global Warming even easier to Deny).

We convert Chironean Despair to Chironean Miracles by none other than Empathizing with our Despair.  “You poor Sweetheart, are you feeling like life will be empty now?”  That simple shift of our Identity, from Victim to Witness, opens us to new Perspectives. 

So how does Chiron fit into this chart?  Chiron is at the far midpoint between Mars and Haumea – at the focus of a Finger of God, meaning nothing less than Pay Attention to Chiron, Devote all of your Attention to where Despair resides in your Body, Lovingly.

The Stellium of Stations also Squares the Nodes, meaning that it may trigger our “Worst Fears” (South Node) and prompt us to move toward our Mission (North Node).  We’re aided by dwarf planet Makemake (Manifestation) and the Triple Initiation it’s making with Lilith and the North Node.  The suggestion is that Yindependence and Creating the Feminine Way (PIAVA – https://astrobuss.wordpress.com/category/manifestation/piava/ ) will promote our Mission.

Saturn makes a Trine-Sextile Bridge across the T-Square from the last Degree of Scorpio.  This tells us that The Most Important Thing is moving through our Worst Fears.  Sagittarius is about Letting Go, and Chiron about Embracing, but Scorpio is about Getting to the Bottom of Things – Fearlessly.  This makes Saturn Unx to the Stellium, the Angle of Pattern-Breaking.  In other words…

The Most Important Thing here is Breaking the Patterns that Limit us.

While the Galactic Center is Sun to our Sun, as our entire Solar System rotates around the Galactic Center, there is an even greater Command Central named the Great Attractor (GA).  The Great Attractor is sucking the Milky Way and all of our neighbor galaxies toward it.  It’s at the Midpoint of Sagittarius, and Pallas currently Conjoins it.  Sagittarius is a very busy place.  Sagittarius symbolized Mutable Fire, or Letting Go and Moving On.  Pallas is about Tightening and Loosening Boundaries – another clue about how to frack our Limiting Beliefs.  Whom do we Judge?  Whom do we allow to “get away” with more than is appropriate, and how do we really Feel about that?  Locating those Feelings in our Body and Surrendering into the Feeling could be a productive way to expose hidden Limitations that are ripe for Expansion.

So in order to Let Go of our Limiting Beliefs, we need first to Surrender to the Pain that lies under them.  What was it that caused us to make the Decision to cut off that avenue of Possibility?  We probably don’t realize that it was “us” that made the Decision, because we’ve walled off that portion of our Identity – and the Decision may not have been made in our current Lifetime. 

This is not an easy task.  It might be easier to approach it through our Limits. Go to the barricades, wherever they are…

• “How could anyone Love me?” 
• “I’ll never have enough money to do that.” 
• “Cancer is terrifying.” 
• “We’ll never make it out of here Alive!” 
• “Humans are too self-centered to Cooperate – famine, pestilence, and war are inevitable.” 
• “I’d rather Die than go through that again!” 
• “No one will ever Understand me.”
  

Sit down on the barricade.  What does it Feel like?  Where in your Body?  If you’ve resigned yourself to Limited Possibility, you won’t Feel much, because you’ve long since stuccoed it over.  You may have to skip the next step and go directly to step 2 below.

1. If you can Feel your Block as a discrete place in your Body, put all of your Attention into the center of the Feeling.  There’s usually a bubble of Fear around Deep Pain.  Move your Attention into the bubble.  It’ll feel spongy and foggy.  Just sit with it.  We have a week before the Stations begin, so we have plenty of time.  We don’t need to do it all at once, just come back to it frequently, and give it five or ten minutes whenever you can.  Keep an even pressure on your Attention-probe in the bubble; eventually the bubble will yield to your Courage.  When you get into the center of the Pain or Block it’ll Feel very different, solid, with clear Edges. 

Once you get there, just hold your Attention there, until the Pain yields.  It will dissolve.  When the Pain moves, you’ve succeeded.  You can follow it if you want, but it will probably just get boring.

2. Now, take a couple of steps past the barricade.  Imagine…

• Being Embraced by your Lover
• Making dinner in your new house
• Celebrating being disease-free
• Going Home and floating free of all Cares
• Working on the Global Earth-Preservation Team with Support from everyone
• Going through that and thriving
• Feeling perfectly Understood

Stay there for a few minutes.  Look around.  Any Big Feelings come up?  If it’s Fear or Anger or Grief or Anxiety, go back to step 1 and work with it.

If you don’t have negative Feelings, Congratulations!  Step 3 will be exploring your Dream further, and Step 4 will be taking a Small Action to move toward it.  You probably won’t be able to take a Big Action without triggering your Impossibility Feelings (in which case you can take it back to step 1), but a Small Action is all you need, it’s just a Conscious Commitment to assure the Unconscious that you’re on board.

A Caveat.  Your most crippling Limiting Beliefs wall off your Deepest Desires.  You’ve been indulging Fantasies about achieving your Deepest Desires all your Life, and Fantasies are designed to be impossible.  Fantasies involve mechanism – How it will happen…

• This is How I’ll meet my Lover
• I’ll be able to afford my new House by getting a huge raise
• I’ll get disease-free by taking drugs
• I’ll get out of this Alive by following my religion
• We’ll save the Planet when the Perfect Leader arrives
• I’ll get through that by spending years in therapy
• I’ll meet someone who’ll Love Listening to me for hours and hours
  

Mechanism is the Masculine approach to Creating, and it works great for specific tasks, but you’re nowhere near the stage where you divide your project up into specific tasks.  If you get stuck on Mechanism now, you’ll stop the process.  You don’t Consciously know how to get from where you are now to where you’d like to be.  The Unconscious does know, so you’ll need to use PIAVA techniques to move forward.  For now you want to spend as much time as you can afford enjoying already Being There, past all the roadblocks and Impossibilities and imagined Mechanisms.  Just bask in it, till that Feeling of Bliss dominates your Life. 

August-September VII

Opal comes in many forms, and is useful for many purposes, including Soul Retrieval.  Opal is just Quartz with a bit of Water included in the Crystal Structure.  It’s the reflection off the Water molecules that creates the “Fire” or Dance of Colors in Opal.  This is an Oregon or Jelly Opal.

  Š    Š    Š    Š    Š 

After dwarf planet Sedna turned Retrograde today, it took three and a half hours for Wall Street to realize that the Fear had subsided and they could buy again.  Sedna’s a newcomer, so nobody knows a lot about it, but I interpret it as Actions taken out of Fear, and that’s certainly what Wall Street’s been doing for the last several days.  When a planet is slowing to a stop, in this case turning Retrograde (backward in the sky), we feel the planet’s effect very strongly while it’s slowing down.  Then once it stops and starts moving again in the opposite direction, the impact usually diminishes quickly.

The exception is when we personalize the Energy, and make Decisions based on it.  For instance, if we attributed the Fear around Sedna’s Station to economics, we might make a Decision to get out while we can.  Then we’ll be selling into any Recovery the market makes.  In that case, the impact of Sedna’s Station could linger long after the event.  It remains to be seen whether this is the first body blow of the Monster Depression that the bears have been predicting for years.  Economists are well know for predicting twenty of the last twelve Recessions.  But as corrections go it’s pretty routine – sure, it was 1,000 points, but that’s only six percent, and a correction of that size is long overdue.

Which doesn’t diminish the fact that we’re in uncharted territory, where derivatives (which are gambles about bets on wagers) could turn a 1,000-point decline into 10,000 points overnight if the wrong bull was gored.  And that yes, a Monster Depression is likely sometime between now and 2020, which is why we’ve been advising alternative approaches to Survival for many years as part of our Perspective on the Chiron-Neptune Cycle – growing your own food, exploring small-scale entrepreneurship with things like the Maker Movement, finding our Tribe, working toward Sustainability in any way we can.

Chiron is the poster child for a group of dwarf planets that we want to talk about today, the “Centaurs,” so named because they appear to be half asteroid and half comet, like the Centaurs of Greek fame that were half horse and half Huper.  The astro-Centaurs orbit between Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – that is, between the Will, the Individual Unconscious, and the Cultural Unconscious, or between the Ego, the Individual Soul, and the Group Soul.  As such they deal with Emotions that are on the Edges of our Consciousness.  For instance…

• Chiron deals with Discouragement/Despair over the Shortcomings of our Limiting Beliefs, which we perceive as Limitations of Reality; once we Lovingly Witness our Despair we Expand our Consciousness and are visited by Perspectives beyond our previous Limiting Beliefs
• Chariklo deals with the Expectation of Privilege, from the Female side (Nessus from the Male side); like Self-Love, the Expectation of Privilege tends to be Mirrored by external Reality
• Hylonome deals with our Identity – Ego-Identification or Merging with people or things outside ourself, and in particular the Ego Death which we experience as Grief when our external Mirror-Image is broken
• Pholus deals with the Expectations of Others, and how well we meet them; it’s about Taking Full Responsibility for what’s important to us and important to those with whom we have tacit or explicit contracts

The Centaurs represent Challenges, Challenges that we meet by Expanding our Consciousness to include Awareness of these Emotional issues which often blind-side us till we Learn to include them in our Emotional repertoire.  One of the characteristics of Centaurs is that their orbits are unstable; they could get a wild hair and fly out of here in any given millenium.

The other group of dwarf planets that we want to talk about today are “Plutoids” – asteroids that orbit in the neighborhood of Pluto.  There’s a big shift between Neptune and Pluto.  Neptune is the last of the four “Gas Giants” – huge planets that are mostly Gas, too small but otherwise Star-like – along with Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter.  Beyond Neptune we find only small iceballs like Pluto.  Because it’s so large, Neptune’s gravity exerts a big impact on the orbits of many Plutoids.

Pluto is generally associated with the “Universal” Unconscious, or the Zeitgeist, the flow of Time.  As such, it’s about Transformation – or Trance Reformation, as the Zeitgeist evolves or devolves – and about the things we pretty much must do or not do, if we don’t want to end up on a siding in the flow of Time.  While the Centaurs work on the Edges of Consciousness, the Plutoids work, for most people, beyond the Edges of Consciousness.  So we don’t normally see the Plutoids as within our Span of Control.  Of course it’s As-Without-So-Within and We-Are-All-One (including all the Entities that we don’t routinely personify), so the Edges of our Span of Control are really only the Edges of our Consciousness.

Some of the Plutoids include…

• Quaoar – the Law-Giver, not for the sake of Order, but for the sake of Survival; Quaoar defines the Edges of Survivability
• Ixion – Impulse, the Desire Body, that operates without concern for Other
• Chaos – Unlimited Potential
• Haumea – Rebirth
• Eris – the principle of Denial and the Changes required by its Revelation
• Makemake – Manifestation
• Sedna – Actions taken out of Fear

Sedna is an outlier here; Pluto and all of the others orbit between 30 and 100 times as far from the Sun as is Earth, while Sedna’s orbit ranges between 76 and 936 times as far from the Sun as we are.  For reference, Jupiter is at about five times, Saturn 10, Uranus 20, and Neptune 30 times.

All of which is background for early September, because between 4 September and 9 September, Ixion, Chariklo, Pholus, Hylonome, and Quaoar are all Stationary – and all more or less in the same place.  Astrologers call it a “Stellium” when three or more planets convene in the same Zodiacal place, but here we have a Stellium of five, all Stationary at the same time.  During a Station, as we said at the beginning, the impact of a planet is greatly exaggerated.  And during a Stellium, the Energies of the Conjoined planets are combined, which creates Energies we aren’t used to.

For instance, we’re well acquainted with the Energy of Assertion, Mars, and the Energy of Receptivity, Venus.  But now that they’re Conjoined (as they are on 31 August, with the Energy felt most strongly for the several days prior), do we know what to do with Assertive Receptivity or Receptive Assertiveness?  “Go screw yourself” is a common insult, but we don’t usually mean it literally.  If you “accused” most people of Androgyny, they’re likely to give you a similar insult.  Yet achieving Androgyny, where our Receptivity and our Assertiveness are Balanced, is a Mission of the Soul.   Would you recognize it if you saw it?  And if so, would you admire it?  Can you imagine how it might Feel to be Androgynous?  And this is only two planets.

In our 4-9 September Stellium we’re dealing with five dwarf planets being Strong at the same time, all of which have impacts much more subtle than Assertiveness and Receptivity.  And by the way, Venus is also Stationary during this period, and while it’s not in the same place, it’s in a Harmonic location to the Stellium. 

Venus is Trioctile to the Stellium, indicating that the Stellium of Stations will be inspiring us to evolve our Values.

In addition, the Stellium is Stationary very close to the Galactic Center.  This means that as these subtle Unconscious Energies combine they will be Channeling a message – Instructions – to the Unconscious from the Galactic Command Post.  So we can Expect to see a shift – a Major Shift, whether too subtle to Notice or not – in the Consciousness of the Planet.  What sort of Shift?  While since it’s Unconscious it’s not for us to know in any detail, yet if we can get an idea of what to look for, we can in a general way Witness it and Grow our Consciousness.

There are many other related Planets in the early-September chart; we’ll discuss their role as we go on.  But for now, let’s focus on trying to imagine how the Energies of the five dwarf planets in the Stellium might combine.

While the Stellium combines all five planets, two are close together but separated by a few Degrees from the other three, which are also close together.  So we can start by looking at the Pair and the Triad, then trying to tie them together.

The Pair is Pholus and Ixion.  We’ve talked about these two before, as they’ve been traveling together for a while.  Ixion is Uncontrolled Desire, Pholus Full Responsibility for the consequences of our commissions and omissions.  So this combination seems to be about Taking Full Responsibility for our Deepest Desires.  Our religious training would suggest that we interpret that as Taking Full Responsibility for controlling our Deepest Desires. 

But since the astrology we practice is about Healing and Integrating, we interpret it as Taking Full Responsibility for allowing and welcoming our Deepest Desires.  To the extent that they’ve been repressed (which we can assume – if you already Love your Deepest Desires, this is an opportunity for you to go Deeper), there will likely be some personal and social discomfort involved at first, as we experiment with how to let them out of their cages.

The Triad is composed of Quaoar, Chariklo, and Hylonome, and this Triad sits astride the Galactic Center, so forms the core of our Instructions. 

Chariklo symbolizes Beauty and Grace, and Humans are wont to give deference to Beauty and Grace – hence Chariklo has the flavor of unearned Privilege.  Of course Beauty and Grace can be Learned and so may carry a price and Feel earned.  Yet to Grow our Consciousness we may be Asked to Notice that we give deference to Beauty and Grace in situations where it may not be in our own best interests.  He turns the notions of Beauty and Grace upside down (but so what – astrology is about dimensions, not directions on the dimension), but we can’t help but wonder if The Donald (Trump, that is) isn’t personifying this Energy.  If that hunch is true, then we should expect to be hearing a lot less about him by mid-September. 

Hylonome was a female Centaur who immediately committed suicide with the lance that killed her lover.  So we have the concepts of Unbearable Grief, but even more important, the concept of Identification with Other to the point that the Self is virtually non-existent.  The implication is that we all have elements of our Identity that are Other-based.  Just as Fundamentalism is the process of Believing that your metaphors are literally true, Codependence is the process of Believing that your Mirrors are You.  We often admire what we don’t have permission to Be in ourself.  So while Grieving the Loss of our Identity is an Ego Death with all of the Soul-searing pain that involves, it’s actually a Soul Retrieval, as we are forced to give up Codependence and substitute a previously orphaned portion of our True Self.  Let’s hope this doesn’t involve the demise of a beloved World Hero or Heroine, if we have any left.

As with other processes of Growth in Consciousness and Spiritual Growth, we’re Asked to Focus on the Unknown Future rather than the Known Past.  In that task, Perpetual Curiosity is our greatest friend, as long as we can maintain it and not surrender to our craving and addiction to trying to Understand.  The World is a Mystery; when we Believe we Understand, we murder the World.  Confusion is the First Sign of Growth, but if we quash it with illusions of Understanding, we stop our Growth cold.

So we’re being Ordered (Quaoar) by Central Command (the Galactic Center) to Grieve the Loss (Hylonome) of Unearned Privilege (Chariklo), or better yet, to accept the Loss as a Return to Self, or the invocation of a Vision Quest to Retrieve a portion of the True Self through Honest Curiosity about an unknowable Future.  But wait – we’re also being Asked to either Take Full Responsibility (Pholus) for the parts of ourself which we previously rejected as unfit for polite company, or Take Full Responsibility for the parts of ourself that our friends and associates would love to be able to reject as unfit for polite company (Ixion).  Not Blame, which looks backwards to attempt to Understand a Cause (ie, murder), but Responsibility, which looks forward to attempt to improve an Outcome.

To me this suggests a further loosening of the yoke of Hierarchy and Inequality.  As Power Over corrupts, Taking Full Responsibility for Power means shifting to Power With.  If you haven’t read Starhawk’s Truth or Dare yet, this would be an excellent time to do it, as in it she Teaches us the difference between Power Over and Power With, all in the context of an Inferior Conjunction of Venus (the Descent of Inanna), which we’ve just experienced.

This is all happening in Sagittarius, the Sign of Letting Go.  So while Noticing what’s going on is appropriate as part of Growing our Consciousness, Giving Up Control is also appropriate as part of Sagittarius.  We can do Both/And, and it behooves us to do so. 

We’ll look at the rest of the early-September chart when we continue…