I have always loved music but never been quite sure in what sense it was important. The rock generation thought music could save your living soul but it seemed to need more than just music to do that. Some went to India and found guru’s and ashrams. A few became noted spiritual leaders themselves. So was the music a lead in a positive direction? What part did it play? When my mother was very old and frail, failing in her faculties, I bought her a set of CD’s by Don Campbell in the hope that these might give her pleasure and shift her state in a more tranquil and positive direction. I have no idea whether this worked. Last night I watched James Rhodes playing the piano for individuals in a mental hospital; exploring his own history of mental illness and wondering whether his music might touch these people in a positive way. All four individuals seemed to have moved to a place where it is ok to have feelings in spite of the fact their feelings had a great part to play in their institutionalisation. Some had gone there because of unruly feelings that led them in to harmful places. Now they were preparing to leave. The music spoke to them of feelings that they would encounter ever more strongly as they returned to the world. Rhodes choice of piano music was moving for me. I remembered how much I loved to hear my mother play the piano and wanted to play it myself. The piano was a secret repository for emotions that were unsafe to express. Schumann was especially personal because of his own split musical personalities; Eusebius and Florestan. Follow this blog – more to come;)
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When I started studying astrology, way back when… Mercury seemed such a limited little planet; all about news, post it notes, phone calls, memos and meetings; not much depth to this little character I thought. Even the addition of rulership of the nervous system simply added to my sense of Mercury’s abstraction.
Now, it seems that Mercury is taking over my world. “The mind’s its own place and makes a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven”, as Shakespeare said and it really seems to be true. Why is that?
Well Mercury governs both the way we think and what we think about. Let’s look first at the way we think. One thing I rarely hear discussed is the business of laterality; literally our left or right handedness. A person who is right handed will pass their sensory input from their hand directly to the left brain, which favours logic, language and analysis. A person who is left handed passes their sensory input directly to the right brain which favours wholes, living systems and life stories. The difference was illustrated for me by different ways of dealing with jigsaw puzzles or kit building. I am a right handed left brainer. I follow the instructions on the pack, checking all the parts are present and then following the steps to assembly. A right brain dominant, left hander I know opens the pack and works from the picture, sensing how the thing works as a whole and building intuitively. The same principle can be applied to left or right eye dominance (which eye do you use to look through a camera viewfinder?) or even left or right ear dominance (do left ear dominant people appreciate music more or does it depend on a right brain preferred mode of processing?).
In the chart I link this matter of dominance to the first and second houses. The first house is our physical presence and the second being the gifts and resources we gain from this. It adds an extra twist to the second house business of how we earn a living. My left eye dominant friend earns his living from working with images. How apt that seems to me.
In terms of what we think about, that is also of vital importance. Check out the address given by David Foster Wallace to aspiring graduates in 2005 called “This is Water”. You can find the audio on Utube. He reminds the students that however well they’ve done, however smart they feel, their liberal arts education has not consciously prepared them for the challenges ahead. Once they achieve their challenging, graduate level job and live the kind of life that brings them, they can waste a lot of time thinking negative, judgemental, stressed out thoughts. Or they can take control of their thinking for their own benefit and that of others.
An even more potent version of mind over matter is offered by The Master Key System. This book was written over 100 years ago. In some respects its machine and business language gives it a kind of steam punk spirituality. All the same as a model of the power of the mind it’s big – a real Mercury/Jupiter combo. What it says is that the conscious mind, what we think about all the time, colours our subconscious mind in subtle ways. This in turn is communicating with the Universal Mind, that out of which all minds emerge, to bring us back that which we may be subconsciously imaging. We know from a study of the chart that the chart makes an image of our world. Our experience brings the planets currently transiting and progressing through our nativity back into our experience in vivid and dramatic ways. Then again the way this happens is not entirely pre-determined. The chart lays a kind of geological foundation for our lives but development takes place on this foundation all the time. Perhaps the particular kinds of development and the particular experiences we have of transits and progressions are coloured by that little fellow Mercury and our habitual relationship with him?
Charles Haarnel, the author of the Master Key System tells the following story on the subject of mind power.
“When I was about thirteen years old when Dr T. W Marsee, since passed over, said to my mother: “there is no possible chance Mrs Andrews. I lost my little boy the same way, after doing everything for him that it was possible to do. I have made a special study of these cases, and I know there is not possible chance for him to get well.” My mother turned to him and said: “Doctor, what would you do if we were your boy?” and he answered, “I would fight as long as there is a breath of life to fight for.” That was the beginning of a long drawn-out batter, with many ups and down, the doctors all agreeing that there was no chance for a cure, though they encouraged and cheered us the best they could. At last eh victory came, and I have grown from a little, crooked, twisted, cripple, going about on my hands and knees, to a strong, straight, well formed man. Now I know you want the formula, and I will give it to you as briefly and quickly as I can. I built up an affirmation for myself, taking the qualities I most needed, and affirming for myself over and over “I am whole, perfect, strong, powerful, loving, harmonious and happy.” Frederick Andrews.
He goes on to say “Whatever you desire for yourself, affirm if for others, and it will help you both.” A sentiment I think David Foster Wallace would agree with.
One of the facets of the labyrinth that appeals to me is the business of being stopped in our tracks. The labyrinth is a single path leading to the centre. This gives us confidence at the outset that we will achieve our goal, as compared with a maze, that offers us alternatives along the path without certainty of success. The labyrinth takes a circuitous path. Now we think we are heading for the light, now we have to stop and turn away from it. It reminds me of Michael Lutin’s weird image for Saturn in Libra “Columbus sails to the west to find the east”.
My inspiration is also drawn from the Dark Mountain project. This has that sense that the world is rushing headlong to environmental doom, coupled with the sense that we don’t have a ready fix. It offers a cultural and poetic response to our reality. There is the chance to stop and notice what is happening, to share with others, to cultivate a grounded sense of what is real.
This also says that our whole world needs to stop, will be stopped by our own destructiveness. So what happens then? Many of us are not adept at change, particularly when it touches our emotions. The change process has been compared to grieving. We may be losing more than just routine activity; perhaps our friends and companions or our sense of purpose and usefulness. We may need to grieve for all the energy we have invested in something that now is cast aside. This facet of the change process is now so common it is almost the source of a new kind of healing work. For instance William Bridges work on transition. He describes a process akin to the labyrinth. One minute we are piling along, “doing away” as they say in Scotland, the next we are confronted by an end stop. This generates its own confusion. Bridges calls it the neutral zone, although we may feel anything but neutral while in it. Redundancy is often not an affordable option cash wise, just as it is not a viable option emotionally and psychologically. We thrash about at the end point, unable to see the direction we need to go in. This situation obtains until our feeling life catches up. Not always happy feelings but the deep sense of what is real for me, as lived on the Dark Mountain. Feeling is vital to energy and only this takes us forward in our new direction.
Peak in relation to oil and Transition Towns has to do with the rate of flow. As Dr Mandy Meikle told us, being told we have a million pounds makes us feel rich. If we can only spend £10 a day we feel poor!
Peak in this sense applies to lots of things that we use regularly. It applies to oil and gas; it applies to minerals; it applies to food and water. Whatever we want on a regular basis has to be supplied at a rate that meets our needs, for us to feel satisfied.
Once we pass the peak production of any of these things, some people will start to lose out. Indeed many people lose out already. We appear to get by with ignoring this because, in practice, we deem these people politically unimportant. (A moral scandal!)
The peak of oil and gas will pass; probably has passed. In this new world we will need to count our wealth in different ways as we start to lose out on the things that oil and gas does for us. Will we count it in:
- Beauty
- Friends
- Supporters and carers
- Our ability to demonstrate our skill and apply it for service
- Honouring our truth
- Trust
- Respect
- Joy
- Laughter
- Inspiration
- Self expression
- Having a voice
- Listening
- Capacity for extension in skills, learning and courage???
- How do the Buddhists count happiness in Bhutan?
These insights are a mixture of the Light group back in June, along with Steven Covey and the idea that a statement of purpose or identity can be long! all encompassing, take account of significant relationships and above all be rounded enough to be fairly true. The other thing I like about his approach is that you can live with it and change it. I don’t have to be stuck with the wrong mission for life just because I wrote it. Then again it provides an anchor against which I can test my activities and planning. Why am I doing that? Is that what matters? And so on.
Existence is a Unity. Life in one, whole and indivisible. Reality is single, whole, alive, governed by Intellect. I am an expression of life’s longing for itself, as are all other forms and manifestations of life around me.
It is my purpose to grow into myself; to become wholly true to myself in all circumstances; to do this through extension in knowledge, feeling, physique and attention to life’s desire of me. Of these, extension in knowledge is a constant theme.
Over the year I have learnt about many things, psychology, astrology, mysticism, hypnotherapy, shamanism, history and pre-history, how we learn and our destructive and parasitic behaviours collectively. Now I am learning about my own ancestors, their lives and their part in informing mine.
A number of relationships have become important to me.
Current themes include:
- Behavioural change
- Astrology
- Home as a base for reflection, activity and relationship
- Growing herbs as a way of forming a more constructive and appreciative relationship with the land and the natural world
- Heart and Soul
- Quakers and the Light
Astrology is the means whereby I express my sense of self and seek to renew other people’s sense of self. In terms of knowledge it is a pathway to a knowledge of all knowledges. It has a place for all knowing. It encompasses the known in the mirror of symbol, myth and metaphor.
It is only in adult life that I have begun to appreciate how difficult I sometimes find it to know how I am feeling. It seems a kind of fog can surround my emotions and make me appear neutral, when really there is movement underneath.
The idea of being known, deeply and appreciatively, is profoundly attractive. Agreement is not so important, indeed the conversations that take ideas and stretch and extend them; are the ones I usually most treasure. Obviously, to be known I have to be able to express myself, show a willingness to share, to at least unveil the sense that there is something there.
Alice Miller also makes the connection between feeling and energy, Luna and mars. When I know how I feel, I can engage my energy and passions one way or another. Luna and mercury are also vital. To link the feeling life to words, to give voice to something real, surely lies at the heart of poetry.
Today at the light group, I permitted some truths about this situation to reveal themselves. I had already worked out, from my family tree excursions, that a lot of powerful stuff went on in my grandmother’s life a decade before my mother was born. This will hopefully be the basis of my SAA talk on rectification and family history, later on this year. I began to absorb the sense that it was these trials and tribulations that were hidden from my mother as a child. Her family left the family home area soon after she was born and never returned there to live. When she visited her grandmother and her aunt and uncles, there must have been a strong sense of things unsaid; things she picked up that were not for discussion; too much pain there. Then again, I’m sure her parents wished to protect her from the family suffering; no need to go over old and painful ground again and what was the point?
Well now I think the point would have been some greater openness and emotional honesty. I was certainly brought up with the idea that it is not safe to share your true thoughts and feelings about anything outside of the family. I still think these things need to be done with care and with respect. However, I also think that the light helps us to own our own feelings and not project our troubles elsewhere. We gain a surer sense of our own strengths and depths. We are not caught up in blaming others.
I find this insight useful to connect with the Stephen Covey idea about priorities. The business of giving ‘voice’ is clearly important to me. I recently dreamt that I was protecting a shaman, protecting the heart and throat chakras, to allow her to do the inner work. So rather than making a chore of writing, just another task, I need to make some space, for this clearing in words of the heart sense of things.
Just back from a glorious week in Teesdale, County Durham; new experience for me. I was surprised by how lovely and peaceful it was.
While there I took the chance to read my latest issue “Mountain Astrologer” {August/september 2011 edition} and found myself provoked by a long and thoughtful article by one of my astrological heros, Nick Campion. Nick is interested in mundane astrology; never a favourite topic of mine. He is also interested in prediction {“Can we do it? Discuss…”}.
I for my part went off prediction a long time ago and no longer claim to do it, even when I use predictive techniques to “bring the chart up todate”. I am pretty confident that any “predictions” I have made have been worked out collaboratively with my client, working from their past experience with specific planets and an exploration of the current situation.
Mundane astrology does seem to be very much preoccupied with that which is fated and with being able to make prognostications about the future – war will be declared; the head of state will die etc. I have to say this kind of stuff doesn’t light my fire. Nor, I suspect, does it cut it for heads of state or shipping owners either, since they mostly are already aware of problems and risks, without receiving even more baleful warnings from astrologers.
Of course astrologers have at times been sought out to provide advice to princes, presidents and lord protectors. In responding, the astrologer has to demonstrate knowledge, not just of their craft, but of the multilayered realities in the situation. William Lilly for example, expected his client to be able to describe his or her situation in full, along with the key players in the action and their concerns and priorities. Perhaps one of the most galling aspects of Nick Campion’s article is his over reliance on the Guardian newspaper for insights into the Arab world. Come on Nick, burn some midnight oil with a few well informed Arabic people. And why condemn them to revolt? Why not explore some more creative developmental scenarios that would foster a more substantial and lasting Arab spring?
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