Mid-Life Transits (Uranus square Uranus - 41 to 43)

This blog entry will discuss the second of the four mid-life transits, the Uranus opposition (when transiting Uranus is opposite natal Uranus).  Uranus roughly reaches the middle of its journey back to itself at 42 and opposes its natal position.  When this happens we get a shock to the two houses involved in the opposition.  In my case the lightening strike moved into and is going through my 5th House and reaching across to my 11th House.  The Uranus opposition started impacting me in March of 2009, but really walloped me August 28, 2009 when tSaturn was conjunct nPluto at the same time that Uranus had gone Retrograde and backed up over the exact opposition for the second time.  It was on that day that I had a severe panic attack on my way to help a friend and had to pull of the highway and call 911.  I'm still amazed that my body could experience that much stress for several hours and still keep me conscious.  I was thrown completely out of my preexisting state of life and it was not fun.

For several months after the initial incident I struggled just to cope with life.  Fortunately, I had already quit my full time job, but unfortunately, I could not quit my role as stay-at-home parent.  My life partner, Betsy, and my parents stepped in and kept me afloat as I worked through health problems that put me in the hospital thinking I was having a heart attack (about a week later) and through various stress and liver tests.  Every medical test came back negative and my physician, who did a wonderful job with his tools, told me that after he went down the list, the one on the bottom was "its in your mind."  At the height of the initial panic attack I was able to get some "medication" to help me manage the symptoms and function on days when I would enter extreme states of overwhelm.  I put quotes around the word "medication" because it in no way offered me a solution to the core problem.  And, I found, I only really needed it when, surprise, surprise, I was left alone with my daughter.  When I had human support, I did not need the "medication."  And here was my big 5th/11th house shake down.

The 5th House is, essentially, the area of our lives where we begin to establish our independence through our creativity ... it is, for me as an Astrologer, the house of the teenager energy ... creative, dramatic, full of one self, romantic, and playful.  The 11th House is our commitment to community and our authentic role in community.  The universe, without a doubt, brought me down a notch or 100 to teach me that individuals cannot actually "do it alone" and we really, really should not be as isolated as we are, especially in Western societies.  When profound crisis strikes we do not have the human networks in place to help us manage the crisis in a way that can be completely healthy and decidedly healing.  And if the crisis is "in your mind" as mine certainly was/is, then medical science is only helpful on a symptomatic level and not a curing level.  Yes we have psychology, and it is useful, but what we really lack is a mature spirituality to address what is essentially a spiritual transformation.  I thank Gaia for Astrology.  More than any other tool or process, working over my own chart or having other professionals give me input has kept me off the drugs and limited my use of therapy, which was very helpful because I had a therapist comfortable discussion both Astrology and Past Lives.

As it turns out I'm getting a chance to correct a past life that occurred 1500 years ago in India, when I was a priest and father during a plague.  In that life time I had a daughter, who is again my current daughter, Maya.  Her mother was not present; it was just her and me.  Due to my responsibilities and the situation of the plague I sent her away and could not forgive myself for doing so.  Not long after our separation, I committed suicide by drowning.  I was cruising along in my life as a father in this life time until she turned 4 and 1/2 and I am sure those past life feelings were activated (her Moon and my moon are almost exactly conjunct at 21D of Libra, for me hers is in my 11th and for her mine is in her 1st).  Suddenly I became deeply worried about what would happen to her if something happened to me and wham, instant, overwhelming anxiety.  Let me paint the scenario for  you.

We live along a major road, not in a neighborhood (not that it would help that much in the US anyway), and Betsy's parents live 5 states away.  My parents live over an hour a way.  We do not have lives where people just stop by regularly.  So here's a very real scenario; something could happen to me after Betsy goes to work early in the morning and my daughter would be without help until Betsy came home.  If I blacked out, there would be no one check on her and that thought horrified (and still horrifies me).  I immediately began to reach out to people and try to make changes that would prevent such a catastrophe.  But this is the common "nuclear family" life in my culture ... and it is, thanks to my Uranus opposition, unequivocally and fundamentally wrong.  Most of my life has been about "being the strong one for others" and "going it alone" and now I was face to face with utter horror of modern life and its disdain for family.  We need community, not credit cards and indulgent consumption.  We need networks of friends and family staying constant, gentle interaction because I can say, without a doubt, that being the sole caretaker of my child makes earning PhD like opening a Cracker Jack box and pulling out the diploma.  I don't write these words with a smile on my face.  Parenting is hard, parenting well is a monumental challenge. 

I suddenly and deeply felt the "rightness" of community, but not haphazard community.  What we need more of are intentional communities, thoughtful, supportive, with high expectations of members and the group. When I think of the best of an intentional community containing many parents, I think of "distributed responsibility," which helps take stress off of everyone.  This country and my culture sure as hell needs a better model.  With that in mind I began to look a radical (Uranian) ways of living that might put us in touch with this kind of community and help me heal with human support instead of pharmacological masking.  While we did not find one that suited us, we did learn a lot and have worked instead on building our relationships much more intentionally.  Its really a book's worth of material for each transit.  

At the essence, image you are a tree in a storm and lightening bolt strikes from the top of your trunk searing down and splitting you all the way to your roots, exploding all your trunk and limbs out into the storm.  That's what I got and what most people will get even if it all happens internally.  Now, image that occurring on the global scale to everyone currently 40 to 42 in every country of the world!