Knowing Really Is Only Half the Battle

This morning I had a very important chance encounter with my Astrology mentor and instructor Randy Wasserstram.  I am gradually working my way into colleague status and certainly felt a great thankfulness to have the chance to talk to him today.  The conversation ranged, but a large portion of it dealt with my Spiritual Awakening, which I am still deep in the middle of and, on some days, like today, just trying to survive.  Randy knows my chart and he knows what it means when I say I have a good road of hoeing still in front of me thanks to tPluto squaring the Stellium of nEnergy Points in Aries while tUranus opposes nUranus and prepares to conjunct the very same Stellium during the same duration of time.  Mercilessly tSaturn is 5d approaching nSaturn in opposition, which means, it, too, is lighting up my Aries Stellium.  And last and certainly not least, tNeptune and tChiron (Aquarius) both square my nNeptune in an exact (0d separating) aspect.  Oh, and just for shits and giggles, they are both Retrograde, which means they will form an exact square with Neptune yet again before moving on to form an exact square with my Ascendant!  There are no atheists in foxholes!

Thanks to Retrograde motion, my Uranus opposition is also in a tight approaching degree (less than 2).  Approaching and separating energy are very important and an element in beginning astrology often ignored.  When you have aspects approaching, energy is building, and when you have aspects separating the energy is releasing.  Retrograde motion can make certain transits particularly wearing because you get a 3/3 experience, 3 approaches and 3 separations, a really good "driving the point home" experience.  I want to share my story because we all get some dose of what I'm getting.  Hopefully most of you will not have the kinds of transits I'm having, but if you happened to have been born in 1968, then the outer planet to outer planet aspects are something we're all getting (such as the Uranus opposition along with the Neptune square and the Saturn opposition).  How much it affects you depends on other Energy Points in your chart.  I happen to have Neptune 2d separating from my Ascendant, so any aspect to my nNeptune have a profound effect on my Ascendant (my presentation of self and the perception people have of me).  To say both are going through tremendous change would be putting things lightly!

So what happens when you look into your chart or a client's chart and you can see years of turmoil and struggle?  Lots of choices abound and most of mine involve metaphors about "treading water", "holding on by my fingernails", and "battening down my hatches."  You may be feeling some of those same feelings as well if you were born between 1967 and 1969.  The lesson here, I believe, is perseverance and a deep appreciation for the mundane.  My breakfast this morning, both company wise, food wise, and location wise was wonderful and deeply valued.  I am happy to make it through another day, knowing that eventually the pressure from Neptune, Chiron, and Saturn will relent even if Pluto and Uranus have plenty in store for me for a while yet.  2012, when the first exact square between these two occurs, will mean my Stellium gets the double whammy.  By then Jupiter will be helping me out and I should get some positive energy by conjunction.  

In truth, Astrology has helped me immensely.  Without it and the narrative it provides for the energy I am feeling day in and day out, I'm not sure I would be able to manifest a positive response.  I am also thankful for the support I have in my life from my partner, Betsy, my parents, our new family living with us, and my wonderful friends and professional colleagues.  Knowing is half the battle, the other half is the doing and learning.  Hopefully as I write about the doing and learning, I will be helpful to others.

Spiritual Resume Reviewed

Yesterday my partner Betsy asked me what my most significant spiritual transformation had been to date.  It was not hard to pick since it was last year when I had my severe panic attack.  For almost a year I talked about the attack in terms of a problem instead of a solution.  I now know that the break down was a solution to an ongoing problem that could only be addressed when I was forced to come to nearly a complete stop in my life.  Fortunately I had enough support around me to allow me to work through the transition without having to rely heavily on modifying drugs and now feel myself on a good path to understanding the deeper lessons that will allow me to enjoy a new equilibrium, one that will be more enduring than my previous one. 

As I thought more about her question, I began to think back to other times in my life when a significant spiritual event, or turn, occurred in my life.  There have been many and some, actually quite a few, were accomplished in a fairly quiet way that only I would really fully understand even if others had been around when they happened.  In other words, the reality show that could be made of my spiritual transformations would be pretty boring from a viewers standpoint -- a dream when I was sixteen, the move from Massachusetts to North Carolina, learning to lucid dream, and so on.  Outwardly not much happened while inwardly a hurricane swept through.

As an astrologer I have become more and more fascinated with the timing of events and the cycle of energy.  As an example, my Jupiter is in Leo in my 10th House and around the time of my first Jupiter return (at 12), I remember a very significant event in grade school, one I look back on as a deeply transforming moment.  By 10 I was showing academic promise to be among the gifted and talented, which meant being tracked and treated a certain way.  My tracking was pretty well established in English and the Social Sciences, but my Math placement was not yet done.  At eleven, when my Jupiter would have been transiting my 9th House of education I was placed in a GT math class for 2 weeks.  At the end of that 2 weeks I was in class when we were working on problems on the board in front of the class.  I was called to work a problem and somehow, even then, I knew that the correct or incorrect answer would pivot my destiny in a particular way, either back to the next lowest math class or into the highest level math class.  I got the answer right and moved into the higher class.

Now what's interesting about being tracked into GT is that once in, it's actually rather hard to get kicked out.  The teachers do more to help you as they see you as a gifted and talented student.  The also forgive more; you have available to you more "bad days" and more understanding.  And you have access to better teachers, assignments, and materials.  You enter and elitist world and, yes, first class is better ... not on all levels, but on many that count.  My second Jupiter return occurred at 24, the year I entered my PhD program, and my third, at 36, occurred when I made the decision to become a father and planned to leave my career at UNC.  It is very helpful to review one's life resume and see the key dates and how the astrology matches up.  Once you see the patterns you can begin to look forward and see how energy will play in your future and how best to anticipate it.

If you have not done a life resume, I highly recommend creating one.  The exercise alone can be personally revealing.  And you don't always have to look for obvious outward examples, like a move or quitting a job, though those may be of importance.  Many internal decisions represent spiritual opportunities for growth or spiritual misses that inhibit growth (say not leaving a relationship when you should or avoiding consequences by lying).  Even when we are similar to others in many and profound ways, we still unfold a unique destiny.  What has been your unique destiny so far?  What boats did you get on for new adventure?  What boats did your avoid, and therefore missed an important journey?  Who did you let in your life and why?  Have you allowed them to overstay their welcome or are you trying to hold onto someone who should be let go?  How have winded through your personal path?

Life Magic, Synchronicity and the Law of Attraction

I study and use Tarot and Astrology to help me attain "Right Alignment" with my daily life and my role in the universal drama.  Right Alignment occurs when we do our spiritual work both intensely at specific times in our life and ordinarily in our "every days."  Most days we move back and forth over the ideal alignment and some times we find ourselves way out of alignment (to the tune of anxiety, depression, and panic).  As I've written about in previous posts, I found myself way out of alignment a little over a year ago and have spent the last year trying to regain my Right Alignment, mainly to find out that I needed to leave my Old Alignment and start working on a New Alignment.  In our lives there are usually at least 3 to 5 times (based on common astrological cycles) when we need to rebirth ourselves and let an Old Alignment go.  Some times we get a kick in the pants when energy points do some aligning of their own (as Transiting Saturn did when it aligned with my Natal Pluto, preceding my Spiritual Awakening last year).  Whatever the case may be, human beings are in constant states of aligning and realigning.

My favorite metaphor for describing this process involves learning to ride and mastering riding a bike.  When you first begin (if you don't have training wheels or a parent helping), you swing wildly from left to right/right to left trying to master moving forward and the balance needed to keep the bike upright on two wheels.  As you get more proficient, your left/right/right/left movement refines itself.  At the height of master is gliding, taking your hands off the handle bar and gliding or peddling without using your grip on the handle bars to keep you straight and upright.  Now here's the amazing physical thing, you are still going left/right/right/left, you are just doing it with such precision that it appears as if you going "straight" and without any adjustments.  Aligning with your Astrology can give your this very feeling in your life.  And when you do, you can often "see" days of Right Alignment and have clear experiences of what Jung calls Synchronicity or Hicks calls the Law of Attraction.

Yesterday was such a day for me and here's some background and how it unfolded.  My partner, Betsy, has been talking with her employer about a promotion; she is at the end of a cycle in her career where it is time for her to move up.  Two opportunities have been brewing and the one she liked the least became available first and the second one was still in limbo as of yesterday.  We have a friend of mine from high school who moved in with us in the hopes of finding new, better work in this area than the previous area she was living in.  To date she has not been able to find full time employment even though she has been able to get some very good part time employment.  I have been looking for some part time employment, especially something "basic" that would not tax my primary responsibility as a stay-at-home parent.  In that vein I have been applying to places like Lowe's Home Improvement, Toys R Us, and Barnes and Noble.  Nothing yet has come of these application attempts.  So this is the background.

Further, Betsy and I practice patience and trust with the universe.  We work hard, but we don't push or set expectations.  We listen and allow.  We "position" ourselves to be ready and we tell the universe what we want as clearly as possible so we can be sure the universe is able to help us out.  Subconscious or internal confusion is often the source of stagnation.  Too often I meet with clients who "want a relationship," but the tarot reading or astrology reading show clearly that they are not "in a true state of readiness," which helps explain why they are not in a relationship, in the relationship they want, or healthy in relationship.  Right Alignment has to come from a Spiritual place, where your conscious and subconscious are harmoniously aligned.

My lesson of late has been to slow down, be patient, be clear, and be ready.  So here's what happened yesterday.  Betsy came home for lunch and we were talking out on the deck after eating, enjoy the truly beautiful day (sunny, clear, 78).  She came  home to tell me that the second position, the one she was hoping for was coming into alignment and she was being offered that position.  As almost always happens, she gets exactly the result she puts out to the universe as her request.  In that state of happy discussion, I told her that I would really enjoy finding some mundane (not in a derogatory way) work that would allow me to plug into the working world at a very basic and ordinary level.  About an hour after she left, I got a call from Toys R Us asking if I would be interested in seasonal work at $8.25 an hour.  I really have wanted to work at Toys R Us, so I was thrilled.  I sent Betsy a text about my phone call.

Now here's a funny part of the story.  Betsy does not always get my texts immediately, so about an hour after my call from Toys R Us, she sends me an email about retail news where the lead story is "Toy R Us plans to hire 45,000 seasonal workers" to which I respond, "yes, I'm one of them."  When she got home, she told me she did not understand my reply to her email until she finally checked her text messages.  Embedded in this story is another email, from a former graduate student of mine who is a managing editor for an advertising agency.  Just so happens they are hiring for his old job, a full time position as a junior editor.  They are seeking someone "who is a perfectionist and loves writing."  Well, that would be my friend living with us.  So I forwarded the position to her.  As Betsy put it, the "jobs Gods" decided to reach out to all of us on the same day.

I choose to believe that the Right Alignment of these opportunities have been presented to us because we are clear with the universe and the universe now has opportunities for us.  I know many people "want a job" but I think the vast majority are not in Right Alignment and hence the high rate of unemployment.  You certainly cannot hope to have Right Alignment, in terms of jobs, in a debt driven economy.  But within even a Great Recession or Great Depression, those who work or who find work, most likely have some varying degrees of Right Alignment in their lives.  Bad Luck (or the Good Luck of Others, but not yourself) is what you have when you are spiritually unaware.  Astrology and Tarot are not "politically correct," nor do they try to cover up "struggles by design" that we all have in our spiritual journeys.  I have some pretty potent "afflictions" in my chart (Moon conjunct South Node, Neptune conjunct Ascendant, Saturn conjunct Sun opposing Moon) with a majority of my energy points in "weak houses" (6th and 12th).  But the one truly Free Will power I wield; that we all wield, is the power of our Attitude.  I certainly don't consider it "beneath me" to work stocking toys at a toy store; in truth, I love that kind of work ... it shows results in the most fundamental way.  And, hell, its toys!!  Maybe I'm finally going to get in an environment that will help me master that friggin' Playfulness card :-) ... that is, if they decide to hire me!  I'm letting the universe know that I'd appreciate the job if I get it and I appreciate the opportunity if I don't.

The Year of Gratefulness

Each year I try to think of a word or phrase that best encapsulates that year. In 2009 my phrase was "Buddha by the River".  I decided to sit down by the river and wait for the world to come past me, and it did.  I met people from Argentina, Japan, Canada, Estonia, Macedonia, and numerous states around the country ... all in my home via my astrology practice and meetups. 

This year my word is "gratefulness", which reached full bloom when I went to visit my grandfather in Ronda, NC two weekends ago.  While there I felt profoundly grateful for his home and the gift of retreat that it offered me at a time when I clearly needed slow movement and silence.  I was able to read, rest, and enjoy lazy days with him, all while enjoying the best in country cooking and sweet tea.  I look forward to returning in about three weeks.

While there I experienced gratefulness in so many areas of my life.  I remain in awe of my relationship with Betsy and Maya.  Both add such joy to my life that words will be lacking no matter how eloquently woven.  I will suffice to say I love them both and feel their love daily.  I became grateful for my Spiritual Awakening, even as it has been challenging and many days debilitating.  Over the duration of the experience, still ongoing, I acknowledge the amazing gift of transformation and rebirth that is happening to my soul and personality.  I am grateful for my community and where I live.  Cary is a diverse, intelligent, soulful area that provides me and my family with great safety, health, and opportunity.  I love that Betsy and I can walk to her job, that we can have a pool for Maya and her sisters Zelda and Elanor, that Maya can go to an outstanding Montessori school only 5 miles from our home, that we have a movie theater 1/2 a mile from our house, and lots and lots of local business to enrich our community.

I have been grateful for Alibris Books.com and Ebay, which have allowed me to build my Astrology and Tarot library at nominal costs, providing me with rare and hard to find books that Barnes and Noble will never carry.  I am grateful for Barnes and Noble as a place for me to have mini-retreats and enjoy a sweet snack as I read a comic book graphic novel.  I am grateful that my parents live nearby; I just wish they were closer and we could spend more time together.  But I love going down for a visit and playing golf with Dad, sitting out by the lake in their backyard, and enjoying a home cooked breakfast from Mom.  I am grateful for the medical and psychological professions that have helped me through my Spiritual Awakening without judgment as they did their best to identify my problems, helping where they could and understanding where they could not.

I am grateful for the mundane, "easy to take for granted" aspects of my life.  My home, which keeps me dry when it rains and cool when it is hot.  Flushing toilets, man, am I grateful for those!  Every working flush is pure joy.  Working stoplights, paved roads (smooth or rough), sidewalks (even though we could use more of them), my lawn mower starting each time I use it, the A/C in my van when I have everyone in it (6 of us).  I love this computer and the free services I get for blogging and email (gmail).  I am grateful for fresh water, a state with four seasons, a local government that picks up my trash and recycling.  I am grateful for the wind on a hot day, the bright sun on a clear day, bees, and our cat, Chula, who keeps the moles and mice out of the yard.

This year, I am grateful.

A Happily Spiritual Journey

I have many posts I want to write, including several book recommendations.  But first, I just want to write about my trip to visit my grandfather (Papa).  The trip was very special and important for me; I really needed some time away and I have not spent time with him for a while (too long to recount without some internal shame actually).  I left Friday morning after I took the girls to school.  The day before I'd taken my truck in for inspection and service, opting to get several recommended upgrades in preparation for my drive (a little under 150 miles) from Cary to Ronda (just outside of Wilkesboro).  I was not in a rush to get up there, so I planned to drive at a leisurely pace (just at or under the speed limit), stop somewhere along the way for lunch, and visit the old trailer park where he and Nana (my mom's parents) and my Grandmother (my father's mother) had lived.  Nana and Grandmother have long since passed, but Papa is still going strong at 91 (b. 1919).  Every time he trades in for a new car (usually after 2 years) he racks up about 80,000 miles (he used to drive trucks for a living).

He lives in a very nice double wide trailer on a piece of land that was in Nana's family, surrounded by other family members across the road and on one side of him.  I did not fully realize the spiritual nature of the land until this visit; I don't think I could "hear" the land until this time in my life.  The drive up was quite pleasant even though it was the last hot day (over 90) before the cold front arrived on Sat.  I drove straight through Burlington, Greensboro, and Winston-Salem until I got to Clemmons.  The Clemmons exit was the one we used to take when we would visit them in the trailer park.  I stopped there to eat and see if the trailer park was still around.  The change at the exit was grand, a mini shopping center had been built and the old road leading back to the trailer park had been diverted to the end of the shopping center.  I ate at my first Zaxzby's, a standard chicken and fries place and unwound a bit from the drive.

When I left I went down the old road and found the familiar brick house that marked the turn into the trailer park, Chardale Drive.  The road went up a slight hill on the other side of the house and a flood of memories began to cascade into my mind as I came over the crest to find the trailer park still there and, basically, frozen in time.  The first trailer, which was the one where Grandmother lived, looked exactly like hers from 30 years ago.  I was stunned how much emotion swept into me as pulled into the main drive and started passing all the trailers.  Nana and Papa lived in two trailers, one on the main road and one down the hill in a cul-de-sac.  I swear the one I passed on the main road was the same one I'd played in as a child; even the concrete parking pad had the same chipped out sections!  I drove to the turn that would take me down the hill to the first trailer they had lived in and this one was obviously not the original, but the lay out of the park, the spacing of the trailers, everything else was the same.  Yes, you could see the time stamp in the decks that need replacing and the central air units (instead of only window units).  Time had passed and stood still.  I wept as I left; tears of joy actually, just so many good memories there.

The rest of the drive did not take long and I actually arrived a bit early.  Papa was not back and I was locked out, which was not a problem because his home has a breezeway between the garage and main trailer.  Even though it was hot, it was not humid, and I'm very heat tolerant, so it felt great to sit down on the outdoor sofa and just relax.  The breeze was blowing through and I could feel how special this visit was going to be for me; how important it was for me to be up here, in this place, at this time.  After about 30 minutes Papa arrived and our visit began. 

I really only had simple intentions for my visit, talk, eat, read, watch TV, sleep.  Fortunately these are all things Papa enjoys doing as well.  We quickly settled into his routine, beginning with a Cary Grant movie, followed by a Alan Ladd/Veronica Lake movie, then off to Subway for some dinner.  After dinner we watched another Alan Ladd movie and got ready for bed.  I have to share a funny observation about the classic black and white movies I watched; everyone in almost every scene was either smoking or drinking or both.  If we think advertising in movies now is blatant, it was starkly clear which companies were helping to bankroll the movies of the 30's and 40's.  Three of the male characters in The Blue Dahlia had a drink routine, "give me a bourbon with a bourbon chaser."

Saturday started off fantastic; I stepped out onto the porch as the sun was just starting to rise (6:00AM) and I could see my breath!  I am ready for the fall; more so this year than in years past.  I feel more in touch with the seasons and am ready for some less humid weather.  Papa is an early riser as well and he was up soon after me.  We got dressed and he took me to a small country restaurant and we had biscuits and gravy, eggs, and bacon.  He had his usual black coffee and I had the best sweet tea I've had in a long time.  We both reminisced about Nana's biscuits and gravy, they were the best, and made with lots of love.  All in all, already, I was feeling my blessings.  My grandparents loved me deeply and I could feel all that love filling my heart on this visit.

After the breakfast we headed back to his home; he watch a little TV while I sat on the breezeway, read, and soaked in the beautiful morning.  Around 10 he suggested we go up to the North Wilkesboro speedway and watch the races.  The speedway had been a hub of activity until it was closed in 1996 due to a dispute between the two owners.  This past Labor Day weekend was the inaugural re-opening of the track and featured 4 races.  Time trials started at 11AM so we headed up there around 10:30.  I've watched some racing with Papa in the past on television, but I had never been to a live race.  After we arrived and got out of the car, the first thing to hit me was the noise of the race car engines.  And it hit me hard.  I have very sensitive hearing and did not realize the amount of sound the cars would put out.  Imagine movie theater loud over 2 football stadiums from the source!  In the end my desire to share this experience with Papa was greater than my desire to get as far from the noise as I could.  Eventually I found a rhythm with the noise and was able to enjoy the time trials and 3 of the 4 races (the last one was 200 laps and would go past dinner time).

There were many important spiritual lessons in my time at the race track and the most important one aligned with a book I began reading Friday night after I got to Papa's.  The book was Wismatic by Pam Yount, a North Carolinian writing about Wisdom as she learned it from her son's death (at 27) from AIDS.  I will be writing a full review of the book in another post, but suffice to say, her message was, rather pointedly, to say that we are all on our spiritual journeys alone, and another person's journey in this life is a spiritual contract they made with creation and we should not judge unless we intend to INTERVENE.  I can admit to more than a few judgments regarding "the country", "race car fans", and "southern behaviors" over the course of my life.  But on that day, at the track, I chose not to judge, but to appreciate everyone and the experience of watching and being part of the race environment.  I let myself feel the excitement everyone had about the reopening of the track and could see its importance for the community.  I could feel human history in the gathering of these people for an event and how much that gathering meant.  It was wonderful.

After the race we went to another small restaurant that served meat and vegetables (and sweet tea of course) and talked about the race.  Papa always has been and still is a lucid thinker and very good conversationalist, and he is also comfortable with silence.  There is no strain in our time together.  After dinner we went back and he watched some more TV while I did some more reading.  Eventually I stepped outside to walk the land a bit and eat some blueberries of his blueberry bushes.  They were ripe and delicious.  While in this moment I recognized how amazing this area of North Carolina really is.  The entire area is made up of small and large farms; there is a healthy local economy and I had no doubt that the food I ate both restaurants was grown locally.  Lately my body has been very reactive to food and I have switch to an almost solely organic diet.  I knew I would not find much "organic" store food so I told my body I would be eating the food of the area and to appreciate it.  Had I eaten what I did eat here, in Cary, I would have been miserable in a day.  Again, I chose to accept and appreciate and all was well.

My original plan was to return some time Sunday, but I wanted to stay another full day and return on Monday morning, so I decided to stay one more day.  Sunday really turned out to be my day to fully digest all that I had experienced so far and I was deeply, soul level grateful for my visit and my time with Papa.   Again, we were both up early and had found our routine.  He would watch some TV while I did some reading.  Eventually I would join him, to find him watching his favorite, a western.  Since it was Sunday, he planned to go to church and this time I decided to stay at the house.  I wanted to commune with the land more, which I did.  In that time I asked my soul about the land and its purpose in my life and found that it was and is to be a place of sanctuary for me, a place to retreat and recharge.  This awareness and knowledge was the tremendous gift of my trip.  The rest of the day was a glorious time of all the things I came to do and when I left Monday morning I felt full up and truly happy.

I wanted to share this story, this time to convey how much each of us needs a place of sanctuary.  I hope you all have such a place and the ability to access it from time to time.  I know I will be returning soon to visit my grandfather and many times over in my future to visit the land and let it help heal me.