From an
astrological point of view the entire 2012 movement can be seen as a warning
from the creative unconsciousness of the human soul. The lesson or the goal of
this astrologically based cultural movement (Mayan or otherwise) has always
been the same: let's produce less fate and create more free will.
The
first mistake we humans have made throughout the ages is to believe that the
soul "has" free will. In fact the soul IS free will. The second
mistake we've made is to believe in fully or to dismiss fully the prophecies of
Astrologers and Shamans and Sages rather than to listen carefully to their prophecies,
and if they resonate to change our ways. Prophecy is nothing more than the
prediction of an outcome based on the momentum of a current unconscious trend.
The prophet's ability to pin point a date where the unconscious card castle will
fall apart is mysterious, but it has always relied upon the prophet or
astrologer's understanding of natural rhythms and cycles of nature (human
nature, planets and ecosystems, etc). The same alignment in the stars or
planets that may spell the disaster of a King or Kingdom can adapt and create
something entirely different if the King, knowing or listening to the flow of
nature uses his free will to humble himself and realign things. This is why
prophets always say, "change your ways or else."
Herein
lies the ultimate misunderstanding about astrology and prophecy amongst the
majority of human beings. We want to know if it's "fate or free
will?" "Which one is it?" we ask ourselves. Is there an all
powerful God behind the scenes planning our lives for us, or is there some all
powerful planetary mechanics or polar magnetic fields rotating life in an
ultimately predictable way that's just too big and too wise for us to know
about yet? Or is the Universe essentially random, meaningless, or perhaps does
it display a certain free willed creativity of its own? Maybe we're free and
meaning making is just an evolutionary bi-product of that freedom.
Yet the
answers that we are discovering in fields like Shamanism, Astrology, Quantum
Mechanics, and through daily spiritual practices like yoga, meditation, and
prayer (to name a few) are all one and the same: fate and the all powerful,
sometimes terrible, Sky God appears only when we (individually or collectively)
are not creating and living from a conscious alignment with our soul, which IS
the free will. It's as if fate and the terrible sky god are actually a
caricature of our own unconsciousness. Make stupid decisions from old patterns
and unconsciousness and some really scary looking stuff shows up. Much of organized
religion, in fact, has been based upon the placation or the fear of this
element of our unconsciousness arriving at untimely moments. We've refused to
understand the appearance of "bad fate" or the terrible sky God (the
2012 disaster film of our lives or of the species) as a picture of ourselves
that has been amassing over many accrued moments of unconscious creating.
Spiritual
people often try to short circuit or decode fate or the terrible Sky God by
simply holding an idea of oneness or an emotional attachment to the idea of
oneness. People say, "Bliss! Peace! Love! Harmony! Oneness! We're all one
thing!" And ultimately understanding the appearance of fate as a product
of unconsciousness DOES suggest that we are total beings disconnecting
ourselves from ourselves; if we look into the Sky God deeply enough and with
enough stillness, we do see ourselves and we see the oneness, but having had
the experience of oneness a few times, having recognized the unconsciousness as
an aspect of ourselves, does not make us ultimately free. It cannot make us
ultimately free because we already are. So it's important that when we parade
around emotionally attached to freedom and bliss and oneness that we ask
ourselves if our joy isn't being inspired by our fear of yet another encounter
with our unconsciousness. Because who wants to see the unconscious bad fate or
terrible sky God appearing in the now terrifying costume of oneness and bliss?
Not me!
So as an
astrologer, knowing that the bliss of oneness and the recognition of the whole
is something we should learn to live from as a quiet and simple fact as much as
any "new age belief" I've asked myself how does one actually free
oneself from the reappearance of the fates and the scary sky gods (when I use
the term sky gods I'm imagining the God from the biblical book of Job I grew up
having to read in church!)? The answer I've come to through my practice with
many astrology clients all asking essentially the same question is this: it
takes a lot of time and a lot of work (sometimes suffering).
Another
attempt to decode fate and the sky God has come from smart people who say that
time is an illusion. They might as well be saying "it's all maya."
All of this interplay we get ourselves into is an illusion of time and space;
we are already free and simply experiencing the contours and textures of our
own freedom. I agree that this is true. And I agree that this point of view is
actually afforded to us human beings through things like trance, ecstatic
religious experiences, psychedelics, the mind, sexuality, etc. When we somehow
see that the external world is a manifestation of our creative unconsciousness
(all of ours together) time collapses into itself and its linear sequential
nature ceases. Time becomes more like a wave and less like a succession of single
points. But what I've also noticed is that time returns, eventually, to a linear
movement.
Once back to the linear it concerns me to try and speak of the
non-linear experience of time. Mostly because to speak of the non-linear
experience of time from within the linear experience of time is to somehow nostalgize and dogmatize non-linear time and
make it into something it wasn't or isn't. To know how to actually speak of
time, in the fullness of its nature (time as an experience of change in both a
wave and a particle state) it seems that we need to have many (paradoxically
successive) experiences of going out of time and returning back to it. In
practical terms we need to experience the oneness, return to the dualistic, and
then repeat the cycle many times over before we start to understand the
interdepenence and integral union of the two. As an astrologer I am concerned
that much of our spirituality, and much of the 2012 movement for example, is
starting to focus on the oneness as something "opposed to" the
dualistic.
For
example, many spiritual people say that the ego is a product of dualism and
separation whereas the soul is non dualistic and unified with everything. This
obviously sets up yet another, perhaps subtler, dualism. People will say time
is not real and that something else is realer (again a dualistic comparison is
being made). In the 2012 movement people will say "We humans are lost in
unconsciousness!" yet here "we are" proclaiming it consciously.
Similar funky paradoxes are being explored in the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Critics point out that Main Street and Wall Street are in bed with each other
as much as they are separate from each other. People say, "Don't worry
about Wall Street, work on removing reliance on credit cards in your personal
life first, you hypocrite!" Others say, "confront them and yourself
at the same time." Is anybody really "wrong" or
"right?"
At the
outset of perhaps the most prophetically heralded year of modern civilization
how do we hold dualism and oneness together? How exactly do we change our ways,
personally and collectively? It can all get pretty overwhelming when we explore
the contradictions of our truth claims.
The answer
from the astrological point of view is very simple. The appearance of fate is
not to be feared because it is an evolutionary ally of the soul, even if it is
painful or scary. Does this mean that we get lazy and that we stop doing our
work, stop trying things like Occupy Wall Street, stop having debates about
Occupy Wall street, stop doing our yoga or stop praying or stop eating certain
foods or stop living a certain lifestyle because there is just no point to it?
Or should we really aggressively change our ways? Something in the middle? What
system is the correct system to use for this change? Of course all of these are
good questions, but the point of what is happening is not the answer to any of
these questions ultimately. Because questions are not answered ultimately; they
are answered temporally.
The point of what is happening on this planet right
now is not a specific answer to a specific question or the emergence of a
"higher than" system of truth. What is happening is the perfection of
our free will, which is our soul itself. This process is beyond what we can do
about it because the very idea that we can "do something about it" is
passing away as more of who we ARE is being revealed. Does that mean that we
should stop anything? No. Giving up entirely on willed change is no more
possible than perfecting the human species overnight. Evolution is happening
whether we like it or not and it embraces everything simultaneously. This universal
process is the nature of the soul itself. It is the evidence of the life of the
soul itself. As a species we should continue to make the best decisions we know
how to make. We should think critically, recognize that violence and chaos are
not any more necessary than anything else as a means to an end, and we should
try to educate people about the evolutionary process that is happening rather
than any one truth that tries to arrest the process of life (which can't be
arrested anyway).
On a
personal level we should each do the same work. Make smart decisions. Love others
as you learn to love yourself and vice versa. We are all connected so why not
try to help out? We're doing so anyway. You are not alone. None of us are
alone. So we should have courage. When fate shows up in our lives we should
seek to understand ourselves in our circumstances. We should seek to understand
difficult truths as much as pleasant ones. We should be willing to be wrong and
be willing to be right. Be should be willing to be one and be willing to be
separate. Be willing to experience the emergence of our soul which is appearing
from the flip-flopping tension of all these opposites. We shouldn't worry
"too" much because the soul cannot do anything BUT emerge. On a
personal level, we should take our time if we want to; it's infinite. And we
should trust our soul, we should trust this overwhelming freedom because it's
even beyond infinite; it's eternal.
