Our ability to contemplate ourselves has always intrigued me. This seems to be the thing that sets us apart from other life we share this planet with. Of course, we don’t know this for sure, it just seems to be the case. We are able to ask… Who are we? Where did we come from? What are we here for? Just to name a few of our distinctive ponderings. Billions of humans have come and gone before this moment we are all living in, many deeply exploring and analyzing these questions. These thoughts have spawned thousands of philosophies, beliefs, and religious practices. Each steadfastly resolute that they possess the ultimate truth and knowledge. To me, this has always seemed extremely arrogant and silly.
Consider this, we don’t know where our own thoughts come from. If you do, please share that knowledge with me and I will pass that secret along to the readers of this blog next week. It was during the period of the Renaissance that such notable figures as Leonardo, Columbus, Luther, and Copernicus to Shakespeare, Montaigne, Bacon and Galileo launched a period of reason and enlightenment. Out of this period emerged a statement by Rene’ Descartes still repeated to this day, cogito ergo sum “I think, therefore I am”. This statement was uttered in 1637, today, 384 years later we are still left with the question, “Why do we think?”
The latest enlightened thought of our modern era is that our thoughts are merely complex electro- chemical reactions. This explanation to me also falls short. Through my lens, which I acknowledge is mine and like my observations already may or may not be the ultimate truth, it is our thoughts causing these electro-chemical reactions. Leaving the same question, “Why do we think?”
As I have sorted through all the beliefs and proclamations that have come into my awareness on my soul’s path, one that has resonated more than all the others has been the interconnectedness of it all. I have always felt that there was more than our eyes and other senses could perceive. A matrix of energy that we are part of, cooperating with, and influenced by. A conscious universe, living and breathing through us.
Our psyche is set up in accord with the structure of the universe, and what happens in the macrocosm likewise happens in the infinitesimal and most subjective reaches of the psyche.
C. G. Jung
What has led me to embrace this belief, in the interwoven nature of existence/consciousness, was my introduction to astrology in 2015. Prior to this, I had always found astrology to be a peculiar and superstitious practice passed down by primitive peoples, who were ignorant of the real truths about life. You might imagine my own embarrassment when I ultimately recognized the real ignorance was my own. Through a serendipitous event, I was forced to examine things more deeply. What I found was a rich and elegant method of understanding the soul and the various paths we travel during this earthly sojourn. Astrology connected me/us to the universe. It closed the loop on the ancient proclamation attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, “As above, so below”.
One of my favorite fellow astrologers, Steven Forrest, said it best recently in an interview when he was asked, “What intrigues you most about Astrology?” He said:
“That it works at all. The idea seems ludicrous at first – that from a map of the sky at the instant of a child’s birth we can derive all of this incredibly intimate information. The sky and the mind are like two mirrors facing each other. It sounds pretty and poetic, but when you really let it in . . . well, it still gives me goosebumps. If astrology is true – and experience teaches us that it is – then half of “common sense” is seriously flawed. The myth of the “objective observer” collapses. The myth of “a random universe” collapses. The myth that we are merely these physical bodies collapses.”
It was within the confines of the ubiquitous circle, divided into twelve segments, with ten planetary bodies plotted in accordance with their location at the time and place of someone’s birth, that I discovered something truly astounding; moments in time are teeming with powerful energies. These moments are remarkably captured and manifested each time a human takes their first breath. Just like a clock helps us to navigate our day, marking the passage of time and giving us a point of reference, a horoscope, acts like a marker of universal time, holding within its symbols and mathematical relationships an outline of the soul’s path or code.
A clock does not cause or create time and neither do the planets cause or create the energetic imprint our souls inherit at birth. However, they both act as sentinels that keep watch over individual slices of time, helping us to interpret their meaning. After thousands of hours of study over the past six years, and hundreds of face-to-face readings of people’s birth charts, I can unequivocally say astrology, more than anything else I have ever encountered, reveals our true nature, strengths, weaknesses, and purpose. I have watched people gasp, cry, laugh, and wax combative upon hearing the information contained in their charts. These reactions are truly generated at a soul level.
In conclusion, I wish to share one final excerpt from above the referenced interview with astrologer, Steven Forrest. When asked “how astrology helps us find our own personal significance?” he replied:
“Some people find meaning in career. Some people don’t, finding family life or spiritual work or creativity to be more life-giving for them. There are certain principles in life which really apply to everyone – don’t kill people, don’t steal, and so on. No one needs astrology for those guidelines to fit them. Astrology enters at the next level: just how important, for example, is creativity or career for you personally? The chart answers those questions, and it can answer them very precisely. I would quickly say that no one needs astrology – we can find answers to those questions in other ways, such as meditation and conscious relationships. But astrology can really help. We are all up against a lot of social conditioning that inclines to cookie cutter us into the straitjacket of “normalcy.” By the time we are ten years old, we’ve all swallowed a lot of poison. Astrology can be the antidote. It holds a mirror before who you really are – or an even better way to say it is that astrology holds the mirror before the most meaningful pathway you can follow in life.”
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