This week’s subscriber edition of Planet Waves looks a little deeper into the cluster of minor planets conjunct the Great Attractor — and indeed, the placement of the Great Attractor itself — and how that describes the ‘toxic spirituality’ rampant in our world now. It’s illustrated perfectly by American politics, though ‘getting into politics’ is not the point; understanding ourselves is. And we have many tools at our disposal to help us along with that, including astrology.
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Hello – I don’t often comment, but always enjoy your articles Eric. You remind me of the Joseph Campbell of astrology (which I have mentioned before).
I just want to bring up one thing about karma because it’s always being mentioned everywhere, and that is that just like everything else, most of us are experiencing that (karma) and perceiving it with the lens of duality. There are other places/ways to perceive, outside of duality, that change even the effects of “karma,” but we won’t get there unless we learn to embrace the opposite.
As always, thank you for your insightful and multidimensional writings.
“The thing is, how do you awaken the sleeper? Do you let them fall off the conveyor belt and crash?”
That’s the difficult question for me as well. Especially in light of the new studies which show that conservative brains are less capable of change. If that is the case then what can anyone do to help these people? Trying seems similar to trying to get a brick wall to become fluid; it isn’t going to happen.
If we cannot help them change or at least see the light, what should we be doing then? Other than self work, which in the past decades has been taken to extremes and has become an end in itself and a costly diversion; what should those of us who see things as they really are DO? I know we can be loving and light-filled and helpful but at times it is like trying to help a huge, viciously biting, dangerous animal; we also must protect ourselves from harm. The dilemma of our times (among others).
This article feels to me like a microscope on the impact point of the national wound. We’ve come to now mistake greed and ignorance as a religion.
It all seems to have naturally flowed together to that point, moving forward on a conveyor belt in a sleepwalk. The thing is, how do you awaken the sleeper? Do you let them fall off the conveyor belt and crash?
By the way, seeing alot of personal relationships go through the crapper because one of the partners seriously refuses to see their own addictive behavior. Lots of split-ups with the healthy partner moving on and out.
One last thing — the photos remind me so much of the paintings of Francis Bacon. The surreal quality of creature-like formations in nature. Beautifully evocative of the writing, e.
Really rich, Eric. Thank you. So much of what you wrote resonated, but your description of Hylonome helped open the gates to the grief, which I experience exactly as you described:
“We must suppress an enormous amount of grief just to get through the day. We do so every time we turn away from pain and suffering, every time we walk past someone we could afford to help, every time we train ourselves to be insensitive. We might dress this up as ‘having boundaries’, or we could say that to be alive right now, many think it’s necessary to live behind walls.”
Sometimes I feel like I am in a perpetual dance with this grief, figuring out how close I will let my partner (by partner I mean every other living being on this planet) come towards me. Am I willing to smell their sweat, to let their lives and pain brush against my skin? Am I willing to let them (and it) lead me? What I am discovering (slowly, because I fight it, in some pathetic attempt to shield my heart) is that underneath (or is it within?) the grief is actually the wisdom that guides the next step in the dance. If I can stay with it long enough, the grief actually points the way to a humane response: making and sharing dinner with my elderly neighbor who is lonely, sending cash to a friend who has been without a home or a job for months because, though I am carrying debt, I have a roof over my head, food in my belly and a way to make money. I call the police and the city council about the construction company that is dumping toxic in the local creek and then follow up when no one responds. None of these efforts are heroic. But they are small ways I remain in community and whittle away at the pathology of disconnection.
It is so easy to shut down. Thanks to everyone who shares here at Planet Waves. Your lives and your courageousness help me open to the grief, allowing it to move through me, and point the way.