We have lost our sense of the natural rhythms of life. We are perilously imbalanced, teetering on the edge total disconnection with our collective past. In earlier versions of ourselves (our ancestors) we got to see the whole process. In the past, for instance, if a child asked a parent how to make cheese, the parent might reply, “well, to start, you are going to have to watch the calf being born”. It was all about seeing the whole process, beginning, middle, and end. Today, we flip a switch and the world is in motion. We know a little about the beginning of things; we know a little about the end of things; but we have no idea about the middle.
If we journey back in time, say the sixteenth century, you would find the predominant worldview as organic. People lived close to the natural world and in small social groups, individual needs were subordinate to those of the community. It was a time when the material and the spiritual were tied together as one. As we entered the seventeenth century, this view underwent a radical change. What was an organic and spiritual universe, became redefined as a machine, functioning purely based on mechanical laws. The Great Mother, our planet, sentient and alive, now became defined as a mechanism, reduced to pieces and parts such as those you might find in a clock.
It may have been a statement made by Rene Descartes in 1637 in his book, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences, in which he famously said, “ Cogito, ergo sum” – I think, therefore I am, that time stamped the moment in time where mind and matter officially parted ways. The age of the mind began, and the rest of body was left behind. A great fragmentation began. We lost our sense of process and a feeling of the organic wholeness of life.
Today, as we find ourselves living in the twenty first century, this loss of connection seems to have grown even more worrisome, and that’s despite scientific progress. Physics has now demonstrated that relationship is everything. Nothing can be understood isolated from its context. Yet we saunter through the days, oblivious to this fact. Nonetheless, process is embedded in the very root of the human experience. We emerge from an amorphous sea, take shape, and then merge back again. It’s a process, just as summer follows spring, and day turns into night.
This is why I am an astrologer. Not only did it help me reconnect to the totality of it all, but I have experienced the magic of helping others see and be reminded that they are part of something bigger than themselves. The grand processes that are unfolding for each of us can be understood, context provided, and awareness expanded as we look through the lens of a natal chart and discover our connection with the great wheel of time. We are truly children of the stars.
Written by: Urban Shaman
Comments