As today’s subscriber issue notes, we’ve been living with “water on the brain” for the entirety of Neptune’s tenure in Aquarius. Now that Neptune has shifted to Pisces, accompanied by Chiron, thankfully, we have an opportunity to clear away the fog and see lies for what they are — if we choose to. The astrology of coming years is even kind enough to provide a little nudge toward action as we wonder what to do with this potential new-found clarity. To read today’s issue, complete with this week’s horoscopes, please click here. For a three-month subscription, you may click here.
Eric, dude, on the money – even more than usual. Thanks. xox
ok carrie —
this is definitely ‘right timing’. scroll down to my comment in this thread with the barbara sher youtube links. find her on FB, or get on her regular mailing list. her big passion in life is getting people to stop fretting & do what they came here to do, which is what they love, which is what they are naturally good at.
she was recently running 20-min skype sessions for reasonable price, and every so often she’ll have some free opportunity or other (like you can be a guinea pig for one of her coaching students, supervised by her). one of her specialties is launching people into speaking careers; another is working with people with multiple passions (she calls them “scanners”).
anyway, check her out & see if her vibe resonates with yours. i’ll see if i still have her most recent newsletter in my inbox. it sounds like all you really need is a cheerleader or two to help you realize you’re ready for action on this!
Eric,
This is one of your best. Maybe your best. What you have that Rachael (and Keith) do not is a lack of producers and sponsors breathing down your neck, thusly a lack of need to bury the obvious truth in compost which compounds the situation re buried truths.
Thank you.
Speaking of writing or doing things, I have been having these weird conversations with people at random times. Like a few days ago when I was at the bank finalizing things for my Dad’s account. I was talking to a Gen Y guy and somehow (this seems to happen a LOT) we got into the subject of relationships between men and women. I began talking about how it is a shame men and women are so pitted against one another in society to the degree that women often think “men are pigs” and men think “women just want us for our money” and so much more stuff. The young guy was amazed because next thing, we were talking about how men respond to women who require them to pay for expensive dinners out and such in order to “put out” and how women respond to men’s desire to have sex (and the pressure they feel about that) by holding them at arm’s length and how all that dancing around would be better served if both parties would be honest with one another. The guy said, “you ought to be giving talks about this stuff; you are the only person I have ever heard who talks about this stuff.” I pointed him to PW (here) and said people talk there all the time but he reiterated that I should be giving talks about this stuff.
Yanno….the thought has occurred to me to offer to do just that but then I always think “No one would come because I am not an official expert, I have no degree (yet) so who would listen to me? I am just an old housewife.”
He isn’t the first person to have said that I should talk about this to people.
Musicman,
Congrats! My husband and I went the fertility route as well. It took us five years (but not IVF) to get our twin girls and then the same procedure (ovulation induction with IUI) to get the third girl. Amazingly, I got pregnant with my son at 41 years of age with no fertility treatment because I was strarting into menopause and when women do that, their FSH rises. Best of luck and good healthy offspring to you and your wife!
Yes – all the same. Fear is a big enemy. Musicman said stop believing lies and that is a truth that is difficult for all of us (especially me). When I move in faith, miracles happen and I’m not talking about the Catholic church. Still, I usually think the church knows a lot more than they teach outwardly. It was one reason they could bring Native Americans into the church, because the concept of all the relations fits right in with praying to the saints. St. Paul says we are ALL saints. All! We ARE the relations.
“Modern spiritualism (as opposed to Gandhi or MLK) encourages an internal orientation and moreover not coming out of that orientation. All of these things have troubled me through my whole association with spiritual process. I would not go so far as to call it useless; it works for some people, but for the most part I think that it serves to take creative people out of action.
YES!!! Exactly! That’s perfectly said. It is what has bothered me about all that self-actualization, inner-child work, self improvement ideology; it gets people so focused on “self” that they no longer focus on “others.” The “me generation” was really good at all that stuff but it is time to stop just self improving and do BOTH; self improvement AND outside improvement. In fact, something tells me that when doing both, each improves the other in process exponentially.
We have had decades of inner work going on, it is time to use all that to make good things happen in the world. Not that I want things to swing to the extreme outer, I just think the Hopi have it right “life in balance.”
Patty — that works — though if we are in the spirit world (since all planes of reality are accessible from where we are) then it’s included in everything. I would say that were I in the position of introducing someone to the spirit world I would say — we start where we are. I understand in the context of nonphysical entities; and the nonphysical aspect of incarnated entities; but — isn’t it all the same?
“So what if we take the whole situation as a matter of personal integrity? What if that’s the only thing on the line? What if we make just one decision — to stop believing lies? That is by default a commitment to be more discerning. It is a decision to be better informed. It implies a decision to be more honest with ourselves, and in turn, more honest with others. Doing this would shift our relationships toward integrity. I know we don’t usually think of this as being associated with Pisces, but that’s what time it is”
The only thing missing from the Mad Tea Party would seem to be the Hatter!! Every single one of us has a responsibility to our integrity. Every single one of us manifests 12th house to 1st house. Pisces to Aries! Or whatever is on your Asc. What’s that coming through on my Neptunian radar**,.,,**??
Boppity bippety be bop!!
The creative act, the act of creation ( my wife and I have this week successfully completed a 3 year course of IVF and we are indeed pregnant!); the inside to out of our every day choices; food on the stove; the work place where others do indeed have a place in our movie, as we do in theirs! All of these require the highest levels of intuition…and integrity!!
“listen to the knocking from without….. and from within!
It all still comes down to fear, power, complacency and old age!!
You have to learn how to get the best out of your self! Because its the self that has learned all the tricks!!
That was one helluva prognosis today efc…… and this discourse equally. There are indeed some troubles troubling trouble!! It suggests that the struggle with our spirited bits needs reinforcing with some good old fashioned hard work. A week in the veggie patch usually works!!
What a fine looking cabbage …am I!
“Before enlightenment….chop wood….after enlightenment…chop wood….”
and listen to Frank Zappa’s Hot Rats!!… or even Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks!!
It all seems so long ago!!
What time did it used to be??
Big Love
Paul Hill
When I use the word spiritual, I am always speaking in terms of the spirit world. Been around the indians a long time now, but i still remember seeing spirits as a child. Spirits can be either good or bad, and also creative, so have to be very careful. We create a negative situation by thinking it to life. It’s pretty much how most earthly messes have been created.
“Thoughts are deeds in the spirit world” – Edgar Cayce.
” When mothers are supported to the point that motherhood does not involve the sacrifice of ones financial security. Until then…” All those and this last….if only. That is my dream for my daughters…and son.
Michele, that is what I am saying — for the most part ‘spiritual’ is a head trip. That is, on the positive side of the spectrum. There are some good ideas, and they help some people take some real steps.
Then we get the steaming heap of sanctimonious bullshit at the other end of the spectrum.
These are not my ideas about what spiritual means to me. What you see me doing is what “spiritual” means to me, and I don’t need that word.
I am basing my description on what I have seen living in and among many spiritual movements, and being the astrologer to many who have come through those movements; of reading the books of people who come through those movements; speaking at various retreat centers; and of looking for the results of all that…stuff. Most of what we think of as spiritual comes down to: be good. Time your penis. Tame your pussy. Shut the hell up, unless you’re “processing.”
And yes it is just as weird at political events/encampments where there is so little in the way of cultivated inner awareneess. But you find examples of action among the “spiritual” and of actual ethics and growth among the “political.” What continues to surprise me is how mutually exclusive they are counted as being, as if, if you have one, you cannot have the other, and this I believe is a matter of their respective cultures.
But let’s remember — Martin Luther King was The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, minister, activist and theologian.
“…but for the most part I think that it serves to take creative people out of action” said eric.
ouch. and yes. the more i’ve gone that route the less i get down to business.
though i tend to agree with much of what eco11 has written, i have to say that i become more passive though perhaps mentally more active. i become so oriented toward an outwardly peaceful and caring expression, that the process, which is boiling, never makes it to the page.
strange moment today: i started clearing out my work space (which is layered like the frozen layers of snowfall from winter, now melting and exposing each in-between layer of gravel) and just there, under the surface, lay a local newspaper from 2002. tres bizarre. i have no idea where it came from. but i leafed through it. not only was i writing the three-page arts section. i had two stories in the regular section. i was writing my guts out.
this of, course, tweaked today’s horoscope. whichever. cancer or leo.
my entire day has been filled with messages. though always a process… if i hadn’t gone in the spiritual direction i might not be open to the messages as much. however, i am not writing at all. not writing for a living. not writing for pleasure. not writing.
i think i’m going to follow the emotion for a while…
fuckity fuck fuck. (first-time user of that expression.)
and there’s an election going on. and the world is happening. and on the 17th aries and libra vs my cancer and cap. sun sun moon moon… or sun moon sun moon. acceleration. ring-side seats available. (that damn aries sun will have left the 9th for the 10th.)
ps. i am absolutely NOT hysterical. this is just the sound of the egg hatching.
Wow, we clearly have different ideas about what spiritual means to us personally.
My own ideas (although I may be unusual in this) about spirituality include that, for me, it’s liberating includes action, sexual joy, walking the talk, and extends into the outer world and does not in any way go about castrating it. However, I hear what you are saying about how religion has used itself to neuter and paralyze and manipulate and that’s never good.
But setting that controversial word aside:
the idea of the connection between the personal and the outer world seems vitally important.
Clearly, the “spiritual approach” is not working for most people. It’s too conflated with religion, with moralism, with antisex agendas. Modern spiritualism (as opposed to Gandhi or MLK) encourages an internal orientation and moreover not coming out of that orientation. All of these things have troubled me through my whole association with spiritual process. I would not go so far as to call it useless; it works for some people, but for the most part I think that it serves to take creative people out of action. There is nearly no risk involved in this thing we call “spiritual.” It’s one reason I’ve been extremely cautious with the word, the concept and with any movement that takes that name, or that orientation — “we work on ourselves, heal, and then it’s okay to do something.” Life is not long enough for that, there is never really a standard for readiness (since in theory one is never healed), and the “why bother with the world, it’s all just an illusion?” There really is no way out that, and it does not tend to lend itself to collecting worldly experience — or placing a value on that experience.
Yes, it’s possible to get lost in externals, to lose contact with oneself. But to remedy that does not mean to go so far in the other direction that one is paralyzed and neutered. And “being spiritual” is a great way to make an excuse for not taking any chances. Most of what is sold as inner awareness these days does not vaguely resemble the real thing. When I think of inner awareness I think of sex, art, active curiosity about ourselves and others, an active journey of working out one’s family drama and conflict, and the quest for the freedom to take action in the world. Not existence in theory, but life, lived as boldly as we want. There is not a conflict between this an inner awareness. The issue is awareness, at all.
Eco, I recognize what you say about 60s “peace activists” from John Lennon on down. I am not sure that the neutering of men has led to men who are actually any more aware, overall, of their holistic existence. I’m not saying things are better or worse right now, but we sure could use some gutsy leadership and don’t think that is forthcoming from the basically castrated, immobilized condition of most western men.
Eric,
As you said, this is “a complicated little thought.” That’s a lot of complicated to wrap one’s mind around, for certain.
Personally, I like an eclectic approach, inside AND outside.
However, the main idea I was pondering, is that, from various “reasons,” (be it arrogance, unconsciousness, injury, etc.), humans have ideas about self-poisoning, and even believe they can and should/ or should not, or have control and/or no control over self-poisoning. So, addressing this issue (and each variation or cause may need its own way of being addressed) may relate directly to the issue of planet poisoning.
Likewise, in the peace movement of the sixties, one could not just demand peace of “the world” but had to go home and make peace in their own personal relationships as well,
i.e. the personal IS the political.
joe’s comments about the internal censor’s “security systems” actually reminds me of barbara sher’s take on how to work with your resistance. she a very action-oriented life coach. it’s not that she’s “opposed” to things like stating affirmations or personal growth, etc., but she is a firm believer in not holding up doing what you love until you’ve “improved yourself” enough to be worthy of doing it, etc.
anyway, she is adamant that it is foolish to try and tackle resistance head-on because it is a very powerful survival mechanism meant to keep you ‘safe’ — the risks that can make us happy also produce anxiety, which the primitive parts of our brain equate with danger.
so instead, she works with people to help them sneak past or trick their resistance. really, she says it best:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGUKHLFkkWk&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9wCW5CRGNo
anyway…. it may be a loose association, but there seems to be something there…
“how can cutting funding to planned parenthood and the CPB and gutting medicare and medicaid be called ‘necessary negotiation’ when we’re hemorrhaging money in two and a half unjust, unwinable wars and on tax cuts to the wealthiest 2%?”
There’s no way I can argue with that because you’re absolutely correct. The problem is the Dems MUST negotiate (to some extent or the other) with the other side because they are elected officials. That’s just the way life is. You work with what you currently have not with what you should have.
Rather than place vitriol at the Dems, how about placing some it on a good portion of the country that elected these d-bags in the first place? It’s that base of the GOP that wants PP and NPR cut; it’s that base of the GOP that believes that by giving tax breaks to the top 2% will somehow “trickle down” to the rest of us because, you know, they create the jobs in this country. NOT. It’s that base of the GOP that wants Boner to stand firm against the commie, liberal, fascist, etc, etc.
Look, I’m no fan of Harry Reid. I think he needs to step down and let a tougher negotiater in like Schumer. However, I think Reid is doing the best he can with what he has.
Earlier on MSNBC, I heard that the GOP is going to trot out the Rep women to denounce PP. Divide and conquer, divide and conquer…
Eco, this is the inside-outside question.
Those who take a ‘spiritual’ or ‘psychological’ orientation believe that we must work from the inside, almost exclusively. That is merely the current trend. Yes, Bono said, “I can’t change the world, but I can change the world in me,” reflecting the popularity of this idea. But there are other approaches, and they deserve an honest look. Many people enter therapy, for example, because they are having a problem in their lives, such as a marriage on the rocks; going to therapy for that ‘external’ issue eventually leads them in.
I think it was Amanda who dug up this Fritz Perls quote; Fritz was a co-founder of Gestalt Therapy. [nope – that wasn’t me; you posted it on the blog & i asked you about it, but i don’t know how it originally crossed your path. – amanda]
So, I wrote to my old therapist, who studied with Fritz and is a pretty good Gestalt practitioner (though he has his own style that is less confrontational).
Joe, do you know what he means by this?
“we cannot work from the inside out, but only from the outside in”
Joe replied:
This conversation strongly influenced the April monthly horoscope.
I then developed the theme in the Virgo Light Bridge audio. Here is that recording:
http://planetwaves.fm/podcast/LB-virgo.mp3
cmassey –
i think i part it has to do with the degree of compromise. and i’d like to see how the repubs are compromising in return; maybe they are, but it’s hard to see it that way. and along the lines of a question eric asks in today’s article, i’m wondering how much one can give up and still call it a “compromise?”
when does “compromising” to agree on a budget actually cross the line into tacit acquiescence to kill off the poor and middle classes and the elderly and women? when does “compromise” actually mean hurting our economy even worse in the long run?
how can cutting funding to planned parenthood and the CPB and gutting medicare and medicaid be called ‘necessary negotiation’ when we’re hemorrhaging money in two and a half unjust, unwinable wars and on tax cuts to the wealthiest 2%?
that’s what i mean.
if i had had access to a transcript of the interview i had just half-heard on the radio, i would have posted that and probably could have been more clear. but such is multi-tasking on publication day.
Eric wrote:
“The Way Forward, Through Pisces
… it all points to the need for something better. If we want the quality of life on our planet to get better, we need ideas, and we need ways to apply those ideas. But first we are going to need to understand our thinking, and the thinking of the people who are pushing the world into various nightmare scenarios. Or maybe we don’t need to understand them, actually — maybe we only need to understand ourselves. That might actually work.”
~~
Here is something I have been thinking about over the past week especially that seems to apply to what Eric has been talking about for some time in regards to the personal is the political:
I’ve been wondering long and hard about why someone would do evil in this, to this world.
It doesn’t make sense. How could some humans deliberately hurt humans? Even animals are kinder than that.
And then I took it down to a more local level and started thinking about how a human could do evil to him/herself. And there, perhaps, lies one answer.
I looked at alcoholism in particular.
I’ve known a few “alcoholics.” Here is how three appear to me:
One, a greedy son-of-a bitch, a power monger, has never cared about anyone else but herself. She wants power. If power means money, she’s always done whatever it takes to get it: lie, steel, or swindle. When she wants to get high, get pleasure, same thing. She’s never had a moral bone in her body, except about her own sense of superiority and entitlement. This person uses power positions like drugs to overcome alcohol (and it seldom backfires since she is as shrewd as a Karl Rove). She likewise believes she has power over alcohol when she uses.
A second, was once a sweet, caring, thoughtful young person, probably still is under all the influence, but highly undeveloped with little to no confidence. She too learned to take the easy way and to live by the immediate pleasure principle rather than develop. So long as there is pleasure to feel and pain (and the risk of failure) to avoid, she will opt out of reality. Until such a day that this person can find more pleasure in something more worthwhile, or enough purpose to develop, they will remain at risk to using.
But the third is most interesting to me. This person was visionary. And then suffered a great loss and took to alcohol for solace. Ten years passed and all attempts to sober up failed until this person realized they were not suffering from “alcoholism,” per se; they were suffering from depression over their loss. They had to give up their depression. Once they gave up their depression, alcohol was no longer a problem.
Now, of course, this is all very simplistic. Some of these deserve sympathy. Some not.
But the very idea that our bodies are our own to abuse seems in direct relationship to the thought that our planet is our own to abuse. Whether it comes from needing too much power, to avoiding all responsibility in the name of immature pleasure seeking (why bother being responsible for it?), to the being too ill to realize they are ill and mistaking the “cure” for the illness (and thus, being unable to locate and heal the “real” problems lost in the maze).
Carl Jung thought that all psychological problems were spiritually based.
In the above three examples (and I am aware there are many other types of examples both in the abuse of alcohol or food or other areas), the first is spiritually bankrupt, the second is spiritually immature and irresponsible, and the third is spiritually injured. But in all cases, their bodies are subjected to poisons.
We must address the spiritually bankrupt (or tie their hands from adding insult to injury in this world, i.e. limit their power), require and regulate more from the spiritually irresponsible before they wreck havoc on their merry way (it shouldn’t just be a “right” to destroy themselves and/or us), and apply healing to the visionaries who have been spiritually injured, helping them to overcome their depressions and losses so they will “see” into this world again. We cannot afford to overlook the ill amongst us. Health is not a rich man’s luxury; it is a public issue.
Peace, healing, health begins in the body. The personal is political.
These are new theories for me. This is not a doctrine so to speak, just a set of ideas I have been thinking about. Any thoughts?
There is good faith and bad faith in negotiations. There open and closed agendas. Why don’t the Republicans, by which I mean all of the so-called “social conservatives,” just come out and say they are at war with women’s sexual independence? Which means with women’s independence, at all.
What has not come across to our current generations of women is that biology is destiny, until you become aware of that, at which point you start to have some freedom. But not if you can be charged with murder for aborting a pregnancy. Not if someone has the right to rape and impregnate you, and you cannot do anything about that. The mere fact of rape would seem to make the banning of abortion a nonstarter, but who is going to come out in favor of rape?
A friend wrote to me today:
Amanda –
“He faults Obama — and I think, rightly — for entering into compromises with these nutjobs.”
I’m not clear on what you mean by this. There HAS to be some sort of negotiation. That’s the way life works and sometimes, you don’t get to be in the best position possible. As a matter of fact, if you the the President is “caving” then why is the entire Dem caucus standing together on this as opposed to, you know, caving? What are you proposing that’s, you know, realistic.
carrie —
when i look you up in the mailing program using the email address we have in the database, you come up for the regular mailing list but NOT for the sample list.
this would indicate that you signed up for the sample list using a different email address, and i’m not sure what that one may be. the regular issue was sent to your msn address.
have you changed email addresses recently? are you having things forwarded from one to the other?
send me a message at amanda (at) planetwaves.net with your current email address & i’ll make sure that gets on the regular mailing list & send you the link to today’s issue. i was going to email all this to you, but figured if you’re not checking the msn address, you might not see it.
and if by chance that’s not the case… we’ll have to do some brainstorming as to what tricks merc rx is pulling. 🙂
Amanda,
For some reason, I only got the sample edition. I will wait a bit and keep checking.
Dem Now was live this morning from a media reform conference in boston I was interested in attending this weekend — but am not. The transcript is not up yet for this segment. But here is a bit from the intro summary:
“We discuss the possible shutdown and the latest news from Wisconsin with John Nichols, Washington correspondent for the The Nation magazine and associate editor of The Capital Times in Madison. He is also co-founder of the media advocacy group Free Press, the organization behind the National Conference on Media Reform. “This is not a fight about money or about budget, but a fight about gaming the budget process with a group of Republicans who are saying the most critical overspending in the U.S., the biggest budget issue that has to be addressed, is Planned Parenthood,” says Nichols.”
He faults Obama — and I think, rightly — for entering into compromises with these nutjobs. They “keep moving the goalposts” as Nichols says…… He made this great quip about how Obama compromises with cuts to programs to the poor, but then the repubs say, “oh, but we need more cuts — the poor are still eating.”
!!!
hey Carrie —
sometimes the image goes up on the blog20 minutes or more before the first round of mailing starts, as I’m finishing up last-minute corrections with Anatoly, and the mailing happens in stages. but my copy arrived in my inbox at 9:06 am EDT.
is it still missing? have you checked you junk folder just in case? Merc is rx, after all.
Eric,
Can you let me know what time this was sent out? It isn’t in my in-box yet and usually it is when you post it here. Thanks. 🙂