Wake up and smell the fear

Dear Friend and Reader:

The one thing we can say about the swine flu situation is that it is spreading fear like a nice healthy bush fire. It’s certainly one of those things that is a potentially ‘legitimate’ source of this emotion — except for one thing: energetically, influenza is all about fear. I would reach so far as to say that if you’re afraid of this thing, you’ve caught the flu.

The fear level we are seeing, however, is merely an eruption of what has been around for a long time. After decades of denial and being kept under the bed, it is now spilling out into the room. Our lives these years have, in one sense, been a long litany of what to be scared of, from wiretapping to the threat of terrorism to the continuing threat of nuclear war.

Yesterday I covered the horoscope for the news conference where the public health emergency in the United States was announced. This was a watershed moment, as the United States remains in a position of global leadership and other countries look to see what we are doing and use our conduct as a guide to making their own decisions. With a legitimate president in the Oval Office, we can now count on this phenomenon once again. That the U.S. stepped into line with the World Health Organization is a strong statement.

Late last night, my good friend and astrology mentor David Arner reached me in Madison to go over the chart. He agreed with my interpretation but added two points. He suggested that the disinformation/confusion factor was a good bit higher than I was suggesting; and that Obama was telling the truth as far as he knew it, but he didn’t know the truth.

The Moon in its rather tenuous position — void of course, after just having made squares to Jupiter, Chiron and Neptune — suggests strongly that the public is in the same straits.

I suggest that you turn down the volume on input sources saying how bad this is going to be, and those that pump the uncertainty factor. If you are looking for vectors of this pathogen, the most prominent is television, which has nothing new to add to the discussion and is simply spreading negativity. As I have said, the disease itself is fear, but physical influenza is more likely to manifest in a state of fear than it is in any other condition. Therefore, if you want to address this for yourself, it would be wise to turn off the television and process your feelings.

Processing means more than ruminating. It means giving your fear a voice and taking appropriate action when you can: such as doing something you’re afraid of that you want to do. Fear often enough responds well to being challenged. If you can do the thing you’re scared of, the fear can vanish like it was never there. Then you can figure out that fear is a kind of invitation or magnet to grow and become, rather than some invisible force hemming us into the past.

The most reassuring aspect in the chart is that we are fully in the Jupiter-Chiron-Neptune dynamic of the truth becoming transparent, obvious and identifiable. There is an important factor to the truth: it’s not something that you need to be told. It’s something that you know based on an inner orientation. How one would sort this out from fear (which we also seem to ‘know’) is the essence of spiritual growth.

I think the most troubling aspect of the chart is that the Moon is waxing. The situation seems to be getting bigger and gaining momentum, and we may well have our first test of our new life in the post-Bush years right at hand.

We also need to bear in mind that we are in the dynamic of Saturn-Uranus-Pluto even though the Saturn-Pluto square has not actually happened yet. That is in mid-November, it repeats in January of ’10, and then in August of ’10, being a three-pass square similar to the Saturn-Pluto opposition of 2001-2002. Part of what we are feeling is the ongoing opposition of Saturn and Uranus. As I’ve suggested before, this is just part of the picture. It represents the polarized progressive versus regressive movements that we have come to witness and participate in over the past decade.

Then there is Saturn-Pluto, which is coming in now and which will take us well into 2011. Finally there is the Uranus-Pluto square, which officially starts in 2012 but which is also in full effect now.

So what I am here to tell you, friends, Romans and readers, is that whatever you think 2012 might be, look around you and take note that we have disembarked from our long boat ride across the 20th century and nearly a decade of the 21st century and are now standing on its shores with our feet wet.

2012 is not about ‘what happens’. On the spiritual level, for us as individuals and as a society, 2012 is about how creative we are about approaching whatever situations come our way. Can we even vaguely think in terms of community? Can we think beyond our own individual needs, and those of the person with whom we might be in a dyadic partnership? That’s the challenge. Jupiter-Chiron-Neptune in this regard is a powerful resource, and to dial it in, ask precisely what it means for you, and what it would be at its best. Thankfully this aspect will be our companion through the year, and as Jupiter heads off into Pisces for 2010, Chiron and Neptune will remain in a conjunction, fully available to awareness.

What we do with this extraordinary healing and manifesting power is up to us, and I do mean us.