Astrology

August 17, 2012 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Back to Black

Fifty Shades of Grey… “Oh my! … Holy Cow! … Holy Fuck! Oh, crap…”

I am quarter-way through the book and I can’t suck it up any more. Perhaps my psyche is not desensitised to what is euphemistically dubbed “mummy porn”. The banal clichés, the one-dimensional cardboard cut-out characters, the deeply disturbing objectification of the human body.

My impression after a very brief foray into the murky darkness was that this could be a clunky attempt at a Revenge Tragedy so popular in Elizabethan and Jacobean eras where the absolute corruption of power had gruesome and inhumane consequences. This could be a loss of innocence and a tale of redemption of two very wounded, self-absorbed characters, set against the steel and concrete urban landscape. I will never know.

What intrigues me is how this chunkily-written, best-selling trilogy taps into something that reverberates in the dark undertow of the collective consciousness. The puer fantasy so powerful in the West – especially the American psyche is certainly spelt out loud and crassly clear: youth worship, instant gratification, materialism, the stock-in-trade Mills and Boon template – Alpha Male meets virgin who succumbs to his brutish charm. What troubled me was this portrayal of a shadowy world where power is concretised into sordid fetish and where the stench of pain lingers like stale cigarette smoke.

The Vampire has come back to inhabit the new collective zeitgeist. The Vampire Archetype is certainly embodied in the lifeless personae of Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey as they enact the ritualistic dance – bondage, discipline, dominance, submission. Power – and the misuse of power. This age old motif was evident in the Harry Potter books, where the powerless became powerful, and where magic was used for good – and for ill. Victim turned Persecutor.

When our power is usurped or corrupted, we may stray into the mire where Victim and Persecutor enact their macabre dance of madness. The frequency of childhood abuse in psychopaths would suggest that the “sins of the fathers” are indeed visited upon future generations. Early humiliation and victimisation is often re-enacted. Not everybody who is subjected to corporal punishment, or abused cruelly as a child has psychopathic tendencies, though many of us carry these feelings inside us. When we feel powerless we must create the illusion of power in the most ruthless way. A psychologist friend of mine told me that she has an increase of young female clients who have read the book and now wish to experience bondage, submission – and emotional disconnection.

Satan appears in ever changing forms. There will always be willing souls who wander into the darkness, to dwell there, lifeless wraiths. Those who mistake pain for love, who give up their will or attempt to usurp the will of someone else, passively make a “pact with the devil”. Apparently, Fifty Shades of Grey deals with great wealth, synonymous with power, as the dark side of human sexuality, the dark of the soul: the templum of the astrological 8^th house. As above so below. The perfect design of the cosmos echoes these archetypal themes as Pluto (god of the Underworld) and Uranus (primordial sky god) to reveal what lies hidden beneath the lean veneer of equality and respect between men and women.

Like Mr Grey and Miss Steele, the outer planets are not concerned with morality. Uranus devoured his children and Pluto was a rapist. These two planets were in conjunction in the sixties, seeding the sexual revolution, the civil rights movement in America, apartheid in South Africa, appalling atrocities in Vietnam, and stormy weather in Kennedy’s Camelot. Now something darker has emerged out of the clash of these two Titans as they face off in a tense square – exact again next month. It is evident in the sombre clouds of discontent that gather on the economic and political horizon. It is evident in the pathological motif of Fifty Shades of Grey.

Our vapid heroine, Anastasia Steele is reading Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, first published in 1891.

“Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?”
“Yes.”
“All like ours?”
“I don’t know, but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound – a few blighted.”
“Which do we live on – a splendid one or a blighted one?”
“A blighted one,” says Tess.

Times were different then for men and for women. And yet, what has really changed in a world where we still hunger for power? Where we cling-wrap our frozen hearts? I wonder if the painful irony of the tragically short life of Tess and the dark theme of Victim, sacrifice and patriarchal power will ever occur to the vacuous Anastasia Steele.

Teilhard de Chardin said: “someday, after mastering the winds, tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of sexual love. Then, for the second time in history, we shall have discovered fire!” When we naively make a pact with darkness, sign away our souls in the blood of our own arrogance, our addiction to the tyranny of superficial thrills, we will never know the exquisite heat of fire. Our soulful lives will inevitably be dappled with shadows – those parts of our psyches that we ignore or repress. And yet if we wish to live authentic lives we will have to give up our pretence of ignorance. We must be discerning about who – and what we allow into our world. We will have to pause to consider how our diet of thoughts, words and images may desensitise, dehumanise, rob us of our own fire. Instant gratification of an anonymous fuck leaves us starving for intimacy and lasting love. How our quest for power, the wicked games we play with one another, catapults us over the precipice of integrity, where we lie, redundant, in a wasteland of isolation.

Have we wandered so far into the Twilight Zone that we have forgotten the voices of those that stood in the sunlight with flowers in their hair? Has the hope, the idealism, the vision of a better world faded to Shades of Grey? Last word must go to Tess in her innocent naiveté: “A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.”

Amy Winehouse sings Back to Black

August 13, 2012 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

The Unforgiven Ones

“I’ve just had a shouting match with my ex-husband!” laments a dear friend. “Completely lost my cool. Regressed into a screaming three-year old!” As we stand in the light, we cast a long shadow. For so many of us who strive to live consciously, it comes as a shock when an event, a “chance meeting” with a former partner, a blow-up with a family member, exposes those orphaned parts of ourselves: the arrogance, irresponsibility, the greed, and the violence we disown in ourselves. Our shadow resides in the aching back, the stiff knees, the gnawing rat in our stomach. It lurks in what we idealise, or what repels us, in others. Our shadow holds a vast ocean of energy, which crashes through the containment of the harbour walls. We practice random acts of kindness, yet cannot bear to be in the same room as the one who hurt us so badly all those years ago. Gandhi said that forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. And time after time, we find we are not strong at all. We can hardly bear the weight of our own weakness. Catherine Ponder, author and minister, writes, “when you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.”

We cannot bridle this dark energy, curb it’s wildness with whip and spurs. We must approach carefully, with respect. If we lock it away in a stable, it will kick down the door when we least expect it. And yet, ride it we must. How can we ever be intimate with another if we do not ride on the same black steed as Mephostopheles?

Taking our “power back” has become the catch-phrase of the self-absorbed 21^st Century. What is this “power” we are urged to take back? The Latin word for power or force is vis. The vis, the living force, we now call energy, is also the urgent thrust of our life force – All that we are. Our Light. Our Shadow. We cannot eradicate, repress the vis of the soul. It will find its way up to the light. And our ostracised collective repressions materialise as missiles, gunmen, wars. Then, something, someone, pushes our lethally destructive “button”. Detonates the bomb of unforgiveness we have secreted in the dim-lit arsenal of our very own psyche.

Many therapists urge their patients to express their anger. In astrology, our libido, life force, anger, is the province of the god of war, Mars. We all have Mars in our birth charts. For so many of us with Mars in fixed signs or a challenged Mars, the act of forgiveness may be harder, take longer. We may never be ready to release it in this lifetime, and there is no right or wrong in this decision to hold on if we cannot bear the freedom of letting go. It is when we overlook, dishonour our Mars that we consciously or unconsciously embark on a painful struggle. Like Love, Forgiveness is a conscious, choice. “The act of forgiveness takes place in our own mind. It really has nothing to do with the other person,” says Louise Hay. Ultimately, it is up to each one of us to set ourselves free from our own painful hold on the one who has wronged us.

Therapy, forgiveness workshops, rituals can all be helpful. Setting boundaries, a time limit each day initially for our grief and anger. Not allowing it to spill over and pollute our lives, blacken the future. One antidote against the poison of our dark thoughts is the simplicity of gratitude. Committing to writing a daily dozen opens the bud of a new consciousness. The practice of ho’oponopono, is a practical way to forgive and cleanse clinging thoughts that make us literally or metaphorically ill. Only we can choose to see our enemy with compassionate eyes. This does not mean condoning or agreeing with their behaviour. This does mean acknowledging that there are no mistakes and that there is always a new birth in the chaos of destruction.

If we trust the healing process, dedicate time to be aware of our thoughts, our actions to witness the metaphors in our dreams, our lives will flow into new experiences, new learning, new ways of being, beyond our imagining. Says Marion Woodman: “The Self pushes the neglected forward for recognition. Do not disregard it. It holds energy of highest value. It is the gold in the dung. Do not disregard the dung.” It is very difficult to be judgemental of anything outside ourselves once we recognise that what we loathe in the other resides within ourselves. Only we can use the dung in our lives to fertilise a spring garden where fragrant blossoms of forgiveness bloom.

Crash Test Dummies – The Unforgiven Ones

August 9, 2012 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Bad Moon Rising

I am often touched, more often confounded, by the alacrity with which we share the most intimate details of our lives on social networking sites. We proudly show and tell – our holiday pictures, our new kitten, what we ate last night. Share our plans for the weekend. We fervently express our frustrations, share our delights, our heartbreaks, in the safety of cyberspace. We are relational creatures. And social networking sites give us a safe illusion of community, of friendship, even love, without the messy bits we inevitably encounter in the flesh. We are attracted by bright shiny things – what’s trending, what’s new. And just like in our often messy “real lives”, how often do we pause to question, think, pay attention, before we accept someone else’s version of “the truth”. As we chatter unceasingly, like birds on a wire, how often do we question the hive mind? Ask ourselves, “is this really true?”

The Buddhist term, Monkey Mind, means “unsettled; restless; capricious; whimsical; fanciful; inconstant; confused; indecisive; uncontrollable”. It is our insatiable curiosity, our restless minds that both sanctify and bedamn our humanness.

In my quest for what lies beneath, my Monkey Mind seized “The Filter Bubble”, which offers Eli Pariser’s appraisal of a silent revolution which will have far-reaching implications for each one of us… until we choose differently. With no fanfare, as Saturn squared Pluto on December 4^th, 2009, Google began personalising its search results to each user. Like jellyfish, we floated benignly into the Bubble. Few people paused to absorb the implications and far-reaching repercussions of a world that will be shaped to fit like a suit of armour. A world where we may think we have choice, but where we go through the motions of our lives, reacting to stimuli like Pavlov’s unfortunate dog. The “personalised search for everyone” now flourishes in a world where so many of us feel unimportant, invisible, unloved, and where now there is someone out there who suggests what we would like to buy, where we would like to eat, tells us what we should be doing next. Google now tracks every move you make, from where you were logging into yesterday to what browser you were using, to make guesses as to what sites you’d like…even if you are logged out. For now, Google says it will keep our personal data to itself, in the feeding frenzy for highly profitable personal data, other companies are gobbling up our credit ratings, the medication we use, the music, movies, sport and holidays we enjoy.

Our monkey minds have created a deluge of information, so the allure of The Ark is a safe bet in a rising ocean of crashing stimuli. By 2014 we’ll need new units of measurement, new power plants to cope with the deluge of blog posts, tweets, Facebook status updates, and emails that ricochet into cyberspace every single day. Two years ago, Google chairman, Eric Schmidt claimed that in 2003 we were creating as much data every two days as had been recorded between the dawn of civilisation. That torrent of data is accelerating faster now.

Most of us naively assume that when we Google something we all see the same results, but since December 2009, this is no longer true in the “Filter Bubble”. Algorithmic observers watch our every click. Search engines are biased through our narrow lens of perception, so we see through the one way mirror darkly our own preferences and prejudices reflected back to us. As our attention deficit focus flickers through the swirling sea of information – we sink comfortably into a custom-made world that is inhabited by our favourite people, palatable ideas. We sit back as all the potentially disturbing bits fade away, we we all live happily ever after in Pleasantville. Even our choice of language is confined to the banal, and subjective, “like”. So we “like” a friend’s post to bump up visibility. And with the same limited choice of word, would we “like” the atrocities in Syria?

Says Eli Pariser,…“my sense of unease crystallised when I noticed that my conservative friends had disappeared from my Facebook page. Politically, I lean to the left, but I like to hear what conservatives are thinking, and I’ve gone out of my way to befriend a few and add them as Facebook connections. Their links never turned up in my Top News feed…Facebook is doing the calculations and noting our links, deciding what to show us and what to hide… Proof of climate change might bring up different results for an environmental activist and an oil company exec.” No more chance encounters, no more jarring collisions of ideas or cultures.

Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, claims that Facebook may be the biggest source of “news” in the world. With ominous bravado, he announces, “A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa,” And some sources say 36 percent of Americans under the age of 30, garner their “news” from social networking sites. Are we regressing into a “global village” where we stay behind our fibre optic screens, wary of strangers? Where we interact only with those who share our world view, bolster our biased beliefs. Like little children we go out to play, while the Cyclops stare of our new iPhone watches where we go, knows who we call, what movies we like, what we read… Are we doing a lot of talking, with scant connection beyond the narrow niche of self-interest? We can, to a certain degree, choose to buy a certain newspaper, or watch a certain news channel, knowing that the editorial team’s bias suits our perception. We can choose not to have a Facebook account or an iPhone. But for me, that would be like denying the invention of the wheel. Byron Katie says, “placing the blame or judgment on someone else leaves you powerless to change your experience. Taking responsibility for your beliefs and judgments gives you the power to change them.”

Perhaps our liberation lies in the mercurial brilliance of our Monkey Minds to investigate our own filter bubbles where we live with our own stories. To pause, consider, before we become anesthetised by the lack of oxygen in our own biased beliefs. To be discerning, aware, of what words and images we imbibe. Says Byron Katie, “An uncomfortable feeling is not an enemy. It’s a gift that says, get honest; inquire.” We will not see the bad moon rising, unless we choose to.

Photography by Tacit Requiem – Full Moon Rising

Creedence Clearwater Revival Bad Moon Rising

July 25, 2012 In Astrology, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Dante’s Prayer

Some experiences create a gentle ripple that gently rocks the smooth surface of our lives. Others strike and devastate, leaving us standing in the charred devastation of a world now precarious, darkly uncertain. What is now contained, tagged and labelled as “The Denver Shooting” to describe the unspeakable tragedy that exploded into our consciousness last week, was depicted in the sky script at a time when the Dark Knight, Pluto, in T- square with Uranus and Mars – power, unpredictable, explosive rage, harm to the public, depicted by the Moon trine Uranus, quincunx Chiron, sextile Mars, in the fourth house, the house of endings. *

When I heard the news, I was pinioned to the cliff face of shock and then engulfed by a wave of sorrow – sorrow for those lives touched by the actions of a young man still in the tender budding of his adult life. Sorrow for James Holmes, blinded by the madness of his own rage, his own suffering, his own inexorable compulsion to do what he believed he had to do. What a soul contract. The astrological picture of the event has a sense of fatedness. And in its wake, I have sensed an uneasiness, a sense of collective memory that has been nudged again to remember all the unspeakable acts of horror and violence human beings have perpetrated against each other, animals, and our earth home for centuries. From its dark lair, anxiety yawns and stretches ominously, breathing its fetid breath onto the lives of so many who hold their breath and bow their heads and hurry about their day. Pain lies in stagnant pools that ripple when we receive news that shocks and terrifies, pulling us into the undertow of what spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle has called “the pain body.” And as we resist what is, the slippery stresses of our lives gain momentum, and slither into debilitating anxiety, pessimism, or crippling depression. They become embodied in physical symptoms, as we block the energy flow that may be our ally. We lose our way, and like Dante, find ourselves in exile, utterly alone in the dark woods, where we must face our demons, wandering, wondering, when will this ever end?

The ego sups on man’s madness – and we step towards our predetermined Fate blindfolded – unless we begin to glimpse new possibilities, imagine our way through the dust that obscures, begin to use language that strives to mirror our thoughts. Our soul contract for this lifetime is not a grid of frozen inevitability if we trust our own energy, use our instinct, and evoke our faith to lead us out of the cul-de-sac of fear. I do believe there is a fate that has already been apportioned to us. It is depicted in our birth charts. Yet, when the life of someone we love has been stubbed out, in a cinema, on a motorway, in their own home or office, no spiritual platitudes or intellectual ramblings will remedy our pain – until we are ready to heal the thought that has created the pain. Until we can find meaning in our suffering.

The movie adaptation of the 2005 novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” is a modern allegory that deals with the nigredo, the blackness, of grief and loss after the bombings of the Twin Towers. The hero is a nine-year-old boy, Oskar Schell, who tries to make meaning out of the death of his beloved father, whom he believes was one of the many souls who jumped from that towering inferno on that fateful day in September.

In alchemy, Nigredo means putrefaction, decomposition. In astrology, the transit of Pluto can become the pestle and mortar where we are pulverised, where we lie dismembered, in our congealed blood, and where we must piece ourselves together, bone by bone. In fairy tales, the hero encounters characters in the form of old hags, wolves, giants, or dwarves that test and challenge him, but also reward his perseverance and humility with magical assistance. In this deeply moving story, Oskar meets men and women who guide him on his path through the darkness of despair, bringing new insight, and acceptance of that which is incomprehensible, and perhaps always will be. His quest ends with acceptance and a clearing in the darkness of the forest: “So many people enter and leave your life! Hundreds of thousands of people! You have to keep the door open so they can come in! But it also means you have to let them go!”

So in the aftermath of the dark night in Denver, and the collective shock and sorrow; in the murky mists of our personal tragedies, all we can do is to minister to the minutiae of our daily lives, all we can hope to do is to accept the inexplicable, and live in “the now”. All we can do is believe that things are unfolding, exactly as they should, entwining fate, encoded in our DNA, in our birth charts, where there is “a perfect plan” with the choices we make in each moment. All we can do it to trust that there is a mysterious force that will guide us through the dark woods, if we pay attention to the symbols, the metaphors, and look beyond the mechanical Newtonian view of the universe… trust that we are in the perfect time, the perfect place for our soul’s contract. Our soul knows when it is done – our relationships, our work, and when our time has come to leave our body. And then, our clay feet will grow wings to fly above our limited human awareness, as our flawed human hearts stay open to love.

* Paul Saunders gives an intelligent astrological update on the aftermath of the dark night in Denver:

Loreena McKennitt

“When the dark wood fell before me
And all the paths were overgrown
When the priests of pride say there is no other way
I tilled the sorrows of stone

I did not believe because I could not see
Though you came to me in the night
When the dawn seemed forever lost
You showed me your love in the light of the stars…”

May 18, 2012 In Astrology, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

The Wind of Change

We cannot ignore the wind of change that is blowing across the world right now. We are living at a tipping point of turbulence and transformation that will test our spiritual mettle. Pluto and Uranus, harbingers of metamorphosis, square one another once more – as they did in the 1930s when our world was darkened by the impending devastation of a second world war. The counter culture and awakening of the 60s, set against the template of a conjunction of Pluto and Uranus in Virgo, is fermenting. We cannot ignore the wind of change that demands that we all commit to own roles as supporting actors on the stage of this collective drama. As the tempest rends the veil of illusion from our eyes and shakes us from our self-absorbed, self-serving Western mantra of ME, we will hear the fierce rattle at the windows of economies and governments. We will witness the annihilation of the tenuous structures in our own lives. These winds that shake the barley may blast us from the echo chamber of our minds, unstop our ears, open our hearts. As Einstein said, “no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” Now more than ever we require a new dimension to our consciousness, a new way of Being in a world where nothing is certain.

Most of us know that the external props in our lives are as flimsy as straws when the wild wind blows. The real battle is not outside ourselves, but within our own soul, and Guidance is there during times of trauma and times of calm, if only we will be still and listen. The Fear that blocks our path may in reality cloak our greed, our vanity, our laziness, our resistance to grow. We may come to a point in our lives when we hunger for more than external insignia of status or a flimsy sense of our own power. The savage grace of a devastating illness, a crisis of loss may be the hallowed moment of our own personal Truth. In the 1200s, an Islamic scholar, Jalal ad-Din Rumi spoke for an inner jihad, not a war against the infidel, but a struggle against the ego. Nothing and everything has changed.

To live authentically in this new world, we will require grit and integrity and the spiritual strength to hold the tension of opposites. Acknowledging, not disowning, or allowing someone else to carry for us our neurosis, our vulnerability, our pettiness, our greatness. Holding the paradox that is our humanness, within a new framework. We cannot reach the soul through the intellect. Our quest is to dismantle the “I”. To enter, as the Spanish mystic, Teresa of Avila, who lived in the burning times of The Inquisition (1500s) said: “let us remember that within us there is a palace of immense magnificence”. The soul is in us, it surrounds us. Yet, one of the disadvantages in living in this modern age of “reason” is that intellect functions with logic, bottom-line analysis, research, spread sheets, strategy, right and wrongs. The intellect seeks solutions, wants results that are measurable. And the soul’s subtle song cannot be heard in the babble of the mind – it speaks to us in parables, metaphor, dreams and fleeting impressions, that float far from the constraints of cause and effect – beyond the borders of “hard work”, outcome based goal setting. The soul does not dwell in the house of Fairness or Reason. It resides in the Mansion of Mystery. We are living in Mysterious times. Jung said that the anima was the face of the soul. She was the Feminine, the vessel of Mystery, the antithesis of logic. Many mysteries are beyond the limit of Reason. They cannot withstand the scrutiny of the curiosity or dissection.

So when we empty ourselves of who we are not, release the need to hide behind a bogus self, the Light pours in to the hollow chambers and infuses us with feminine creativity. When we dwell in the realm of soul ful ness, we are in our dharma, the natural order of things. We are being who we truly are, with no masks, no artifice. As we open our hearts, calm our minds, become more grounded, more sensitive and sure of Who we are… we will dance like dervishes in the vortex of the wild wind. Celebrate as it howls at the doors and rattles the windows of our lives.

“The future’s in the air
I can feel it everywhere
Blowing with the wind of change…”

Scorpions – Wind Of Change

Artwork by Keith Burnett

May 8, 2012 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Dust in the Wind

Shall I leave my job, my relationship – can I afford not to? Shall I move home, live in the country? Am I ready to get married? Like mendicant dervishes whirling in the hurricane of our own confusion, we are blinded by the dust that swirls around the deeper truth of our questions. We falter, circle around the truth, obsess about the peripherals, back ourselves into the either-or, the no-escape corner, where we sit, huddled in the sandstorm of our immobilising fear.

It is tempting to hand over decision-making to our guru, our therapist, our rabbi, our priest. It is tempting to search for the answer to the dilemma that bedevils us outside ourselves. When we beseech someone out there to tell us what to do, we mute The Wise Man or Wise Woman within who know that the answers to the deeper questions are always found within the stillness of our own hearts.

No authority figure can ever know the sacred landscape of our soul. Their lives will be very different to ours; through the choices they have made, and if we follow their advice, our journey will be their journey, no longer ours. It is we who are the hero or heroine of our own story. When we reach the silence of surrender, that tipping point of acceptance of the situation, just as it is, we may come to a plateau of new perspective where we cease feeling sorry for ourselves, angry at someone else. Only when we stop blaming our partner, our friend, the organisation, or ourselves, can we sift through the chaff of fear and pain, our resistance to change; the guilt we may feel at “ letting someone down”, or the belief that we are “needed” by someone else. Only then can we know that our soul is calling us to new territory. “Whenever we seek to avoid the responsibility for our own behaviour, we do so by attempting to give that responsibility to some other individual or organization or entity. But this means we then give away our power to that entity. ” said M. Scott Peck. Observe the old scripts, the raucous voices that shout out their opinions. They may be the static that distorts the signal of our truth. When we close our eyes and connect with our full aliveness, tap into the perennial stream of our own power, we liberate ourselves from the shackles of indecision. When we cease wishing and hoping for things to be different, chaffing at our restraints, longing to escape, we can make a sober assessment of our situation, and reclaim our power to choose differently. Byron Katie says, “Suffering is optional. The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with reality… Which is more empowering –“I wish I hadn’t lost my job or I lost my job; what can I do now? ”

What we can do now is make a leap in passion and in trust. Witness the fleeting sandstorms of insecurity, conflict, loss, blame and guilt. What we can do now is to take responsibility for what it is we want, then commit to our wise decision, knowing that we are deserving of goodness and happiness.

Our lives, this world, are in a constant process of change, a continual cycle of birth, death, re-birth. The cycles of the planets symbolise above what is unfolding below: Pluto and Uranus, cosmic catalysts for change square up against one another again from June 7^th, provoking collective and personal change and new growth. Watch as political and economic events reflect the tension and metamorphosis. Feel the tension in our own lives, the need to slough off old skin, discard the mask, reclaim our original face.

A spiritual journey is a long process through desolate valleys, up steep mountainsides. Often it is our unhappiness or dis-ease that catapults us out of our entropy, arouses our quest for a more authentic life. We live in a state of paradox as we journey through the mystery and complexity of our daily lives, and deal with the consequences of the choices we make. “To proceed very far through the desert, you must be willing to meet existential suffering and work it through. In order to do this, the attitude toward pain has to change. This happens when we accept the fact that everything that happens to us has been designed for our spiritual growth.” – M. Scott Peck.

In those desert storms, clarity comes in moments of deep silence. Then we need to ask ourselves if we have the courage to follow the wisdom of our heart, accept the situation for what it is, take responsibility for the choice to walk across the threshold and enter a room we have never visited before.

Kansas

Now, don’t hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away, and all your money won’t another minute buy
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
Dust in the wind
Everything is dust in the wind
Everything is dust in the wind
The wind

Artwork: Sandstorm by Rebekah Osorio

April 4, 2012 In Astrology, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Angel of the Morning

As the slanting autumn sun burnishes the leaves and bleaches the tall grasses on the mountainside, I contemplate the intricate knot-work in the tapestry of tradition that human beings have woven across generations and clamorous centuries. The stores here are crammed with raisiny hot cross buns and ubiquitous Lindt gold bunnies. Shelves festooned with Hello Kittys, trucks and trains, rabbits and hens, all bearing bright foil-wrapped chocolate eggs. As Christians eat their sugary eggs, Jews celebrate the Passover Seder with matzah and other traditional paschal offerings. Resurrection or freedom from slavery may have a religious significance for many, and yet the potency of these holy-days is embellished by the deeper resonance of what lies beneath these relatively recent overlays of something more primal, more irrevocably solid.

At this turning time in the cycle of the seasons, the Moon is in her full luminescence in the sign of Libra, as she dances across the skies in full view of her fiery consort, the Sun in the sign of Aries on April 6th. Few of us glimpse the glittering brilliance of the stars or the silvery orb of the Moon from beneath the saffron cloud of our polluted cities. Yet this change in season, marked by the vernal equinox on March 21st, is a portal time in the cycle of the year, more powerful than hollow abeyances to the god of commerce. The cosmologies of our ancestors marked the coming of the spring as a time of fertility and re-birth, as the tender buds of spring unfurled and winter released it’s cruelly tenacious grasp on the frozen land. Before modern observances, Eostur-monath was a month of feasting in honour of the Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn. Like the dawn, this was a sacred time of birth – the welcome coming of the new sun. Perhaps the first hopeful blushing of the the morning sky heralded a sense of possibilites, the comfort of continuium, after the inky blackness of unsullied night skies. To the ancient Egyptians, the goddess Nut watched over sleeping souls until the dawn. The russet-stained sky signified her birthing of the sun. Ishtar, was the Lady of the Dawn to the Sumerians, and the ancient Greeks counted their days by mornings, so Eos was the rosy-cheeked goddess of day break. Aurora birthed the new day in the Roman world-view.

To secure a cornerstone in a life that feels more honest, more authentic, perhaps we might consider that beneath the veneer of our traditions, those things we do, eat, drink and say, at certain times of the year, there may be a fecund well-spring of something more quenching. Our souls require nourishment. Without nutrients we may feel a debilitating numbness, a slippery tendril of despair, that enfolds us in the stifeling grip of melancholia or the dry rattle of meaninglessness. In this lifetime, we may never walk the Camino, visit Mecca, Machu Picchu, Lourdes or Avebury, never set our footprints on a sacred pilgrimage to a holy place. We may never sit in a church or a temple to feel a connection to the Divine. Perhaps we may invite that sense of the sacred into these markers of our days – the dawn, the sunset.

In our hive-like cities, our manicured parks, in the shrinking wild places on this planet, we may come across an ancient rock, a leaf-spangled tree, a small patch of grass that feels holy, timeless. In our offices, in our homes, it may be a cloud passing our window, the sound of birdsong above the throb of the traffic, that transports us in an instant, to a sacred place of holiness. A friend of mine who works in a noisy open plan office plugs herself into Celtic Women, and is transported into a deeply nourishing place that resonates and restores. Another infuses her soul in a weekly drumming circle, another has a special stream on the mountainside that energises her spirit, and yet another lights a candle and places it beside her bath in a soothing ritual that allows her a hiatus in the doingness of her life.

Being present in those soulful places, or with those people who make our hearts expand, can lift our resonance to a higher vibration. Being mindful of the significance of these holy-days in our tapestry of tradition, can ignite a sense of renewal within the customs and the ceremonies that bind us to the past, gifting us with a sense of continuity. We can choose to invite the refined essence of the soulful into our everyday lives, to consciously seek out experiences that make our hearts expand, our spirits soar above the banal. So this holy day weekend, perhaps we might set the intention to do less, rather than more. Accept, flow into, breathe into the unexpected gift of a traffic jam, or a long queue in the supermarket. We can choose to take a moment of silence at dawn, or to witness the soft silent sinking of a marmalade sun. We can set aside soulful times to reflect, to soften, to smile, to be in the moment, grateful for the Angel of the Morning who comes to bless our new day with wonder.

Here is A Morning Offering by John O’ Donohue to place on the altar of your holy days:
I place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Wave of desire I am shore to
And all beauty drawn to the eye.

May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.

~ I was inspired by the magical art of self-taught artist, Amanda Clark.

Here to remind you, is Olivia Newton John’s version of Angel of the Morning.

March 27, 2012 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Both Sides Now

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…”

Novelist Charles Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities in 1859, during a time of huge social and political upheaval, violent revolution. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, and in 1846, it was the best and worst of time for Neptune to be “discovered” simply because we were ready, collectively, to embrace the archetype, to make another evolutionary shift. It was a time for the Virgin Mary to make an appearance to two wide-eyed children in La Salette, France. It was a time of cholera in England, death by starvation in Ireland. It was time for the spiritualism movement to gain nebulous momentum. It was time for exploring the occult and psychic phenomena. It was time to use cocaine as a local anaesthetic, transporting patients into the sensation-less realm of Neptune.

Neptune is associated with sacrifice, victim consciousness, addiction, pain, renunciation, mass delusion, ambiguity, romance, spirituality, dreams … an ethereal longing to transcend this earthly realm. In Neptune’s sapphire waters, we swim towards “enlightenment” or wash up on the shore of our addictions. We embody our hopes and dreams or passively watch the desiccated flotsam and jetsam of beached yearnings bleach like brittle bones, unable to support the full-formed body of our creativity.

Celestial heralds of the best and worst of times, Neptune and Chiron, dipped into the mystical ouroboric waters of Pisces, in April 2011. Chiron was “discovered” only in 1977, although like Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers, it had been silently, invisibly there all the time. Chiron embraces the archetype of the “wounded healer” or Shaman, and with the advent of the New Age Movement, we were ready. Chiron compels each one of us to imbibe the sacred medicine of suffering as an initiation into our wisdom and conscious understanding, so that we can enter a new stage of our spiritual journey. This is what the Neptune/Chiron energy has brought to consciousness, making us aware that we are all in the same evolutionary spirit boat. As we individually breathe in the star dust that envelops us in a cloak of collective consciousness, perhaps it is not enough to be a mere custodian of spiritual books or to adopt the cosmology of the Native Americans, the Tibetans, or the Hindus. The flaccid underbelly of the “New Age” subculture will need vigorous toning for the Maharishi Effect to expand into a coherent template of love and unity in collective consciousness.

In our own lives, we now have the opportunity to embrace compassion and spiritual maturity in an intensely personal way. This may mean being more responsible and ethically conscious of the foods we buy, the clothes we wear, the choices we make when we opt to buy or not to buy bright shiny disposable technology (are you aware that that sexy little screen on your mobile phone requires a non-renewable rare earth metal, called indium, that may run out in the next ten years?) Is “virtual reality” perhaps a sham to escape the appalling loneliness of our disconnected lives? So many of us in the west live in the ivory towers of the intellect. A place where the ultimate goal is unattainable perfection through sheer will – of our bodies, our minds, our bank accounts, our relationships. We self-help, self-improve. Our realm is a place of great straining and striving to accomplish some goal in the future, all the while wearing insulated space suits that keep us separate, safe and small.

“I am a Rock,” sang Simon and Garfunkel… “I am shielded in my armour, Hiding in my room, safe within my womb. I touch no one and no one touches me. I am a rock, I am an island. And a rock feels no pain; And an island never cries.”

Neptune and Chiron will gradually dissolve all that we thought was of substance in our lives through the long Pisces transit (2018 for Chiron and 2026 for Neptune). Over these next decades, we may be required to examine the porous membrane of social networking sites. To be more discerning and honest about how we Eat, Pray and Love. To ponder why it is that we feel the need for the puritanical cleansing of our souls to make us “better” than we are right now. To question, with intelligence and humility, the illusion of what we “know” as “truth” about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, our lovers, our friendships, our god, our footprint on this earth, be it “sustainable” or stiletto-heeled living. To examine our societal and cultural beliefs. To question our desire to belong to the tribes we form at the office, the gym, and our places of worship. To look, from both sides now, at our own narratives, the “rights” and the “wrongs” about this world we live in. To acknowledge that just because it “happens” it may not mean it is honourable, just or right.

Joni Mitchell knows the bows and flows so well:

“I’ve looked at life from both sides now,

From win and lose, and still somehow

It’s life’s illusions I recall.

I really don’t know life at all.”

March 20, 2012 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Old Ideas

There’s a fresh wind shaking the branches of the old oak trees of humanity. A whole generation of baby boomers at the golden zenith of their potential are growing new careers, committing to new relationships, scattering their creative offerings across a world on the brink of great social and cultural change. “Retirement” has become an anachronism in a new zeitgeist that sets fire to the taboo on old age and death. “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again,” said C.S. Lewis. In our communities, our families, our friendship circles, there are remarkable men and women who defy the stereotypes, say a quiet “yes” to the soft flutter in their belly to embrace all the possibilities that allow them to start reading fairy tales once more.

Leonard Cohen, at 77, has just released his latest album, “Old Ideas”, Engelbert Humperdinck at 75, has been nominated to represent the UK at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. The British film industry, mirroring the collective lake of consciousness, has released two films dealing with ageing from very different perspectives; “ The Iron Lady” and “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”. Meryl Streep, Maggie Smith, Helen Mirren, Clint Eastwood, Dustin Hoffman, Barbarba Streisland, Louise Hay, Dame “Judi” Dench, Oprah Winfrey… teachers, entrepreneurs, celebrities, and ordinary men and women living extra-ordinary lives – powerfully, positively, productively. As Pluto, god of the Underworld moves silently through the sign of Capricorn, the archetypes of the senex, and the crone are being embodied in these feisty elders, suggesting a gradual rebalancing of our collective cult of youth worship. Jane Fonda, now in her 70s is tackling Act III of her life with the same trailblazing revolutionary spirit that she brought to political causes, and the “go for the burn” fitness videos that plugged aerobics into the living rooms of millions of women. In her book, “Prime Time” , she cites studies that show that on average, (in the well-fed, medicated, war-free West, I assume) an average of 34 years have been added to human life expectancy. She describes how at 46, she began to envision the old woman she wanted to be, and quotes gerontologists who believe that threshold events like widowhood, loss of work, moving home, even a terminal illness, are not experienced as traumas “if they were anticipated and, in effect, rehearsed as part of the life cycle.” Although much of her book has a disease model approach to sexuality and health, it is a starting point for a more soulful approach to living a richly meaningful life. The longevity revolution will require a compass and a new course.

By the year 2020, eighty million Americans will be above the age of sixty. Senior citizens will outnumber young people under the age of 18. In “America the Wise” , Theodore Roszak writes of the implications of “the longevity revolution” on culture and social values. Roszak feels that we are “demographically illiterate” as a society and have not yet begun to grasp the implications of mass longevity. “Never before have elders possessed the social weight to make their values count in matters of policy and the distribution of wealth… The growing numbers of old people in America could bring about an unprecedented cultural shift toward a more nurturant caregiving ethos, an appreciation for social interdependence and cultivated leisure, a transcendence of competitive striving and status anxiety, and a greater appreciation of the wisdom that comes with age.” There are, of course, millions of older men and woman who feel alienated, invisible, and impotent. Millions who suffer physical and mental degeneration that shrinks their lives and darkens their purpose and meaning. “Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for,” said Viktor Frankl. When roles of Parent, Partner, Executive, Homemaker, or Club affiliate are shed, shadowy stretches of depleted time merge soundlessly into months, years that slide into a dark pit of despondency and negativity. The weather becomes either too hot or too cold. A powerless refrain of lack of money, work, love, health, or support … buries us in the rubble of our concrete thoughts. Albert Camus said darkly, “alas, after a certain age, every man is responsible for his face,” and the truth of that stark statement is revealed in the mirror each morning.

So I guess it falls upon each one of us, no matter what the circumstances of our lives, to cultivate genuine gratitude for the little things: Waking each morning with the ability to get ourselves out of bed. The miracle of seeing the glistening dew on the grass, a coral sunrise, spring flowers. The enchanted chorus of birdsong. The stillness of our kitchen. A cup of hot tea. Our lungs that draw in lifegiving air, our brave hearts that faithfully beat, despite the heartache and disappointments we have endured. Only we can take the blindfold off our eyes. Only we can feel our hearts blossom open petal by fragrant petal. Only we can wear the crown of age, and embody wisdom and our authentic selves. Albert Camus says “In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.” Only we can stand tall in the zenith of our lives, and delight in the reading of fairy tales.

Going Home – Leonard Cohen

March 14, 2012 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Landslide

Change is a word, like the outworn “transformation”, that paradoxically stops us in our tracks. We may like the idea of changing. But when it comes to significant changes in our lives, most of us recoil from the bracing air that blasts from the open doorway. We retreat to the familiarity of our routines, familiar landscapes, in a world where the speed of change seems faster than the human psyche can contain. Sometimes our souls cannot catch up with the rush of lives lived to the incessant pulse of noise, busyness. Though, there are times when the flame of our courage burns brighter, illuminating the way out of the familiar, into the unknown. Market research shows that at those threshold times of transition in our lives – the end of a relationship, the springtime of a new love affair, loss of a job, move to a new country, or a pregnancy, are fertile beds to grow new habits – and shopping behaviours! If we are to seize these fleeting moments, make lasting changes, set off on new adventures, we require more than courage. We need a sense of meaning.

Many of us suffer from a sense of something missing. It’s not our relationships, our friendships, or our work. A vague loss of meaning, purpose, enshrouds us like a thick fog. Despite a plethora of self-help books, YouTube offerings, workshops, support groups that offer a better way to love, to live. Despite having the tools, holding the key to The Secret, we still cannot find a way to turn our lives around in an irrevocably changing world.

We may feel we are going through the motions, even living a lie. We may experience a delectable plume of joy, a rush of enthusiasm as a holiday, a new project, a new passion, displaces the sense of emptiness – for a while. The intense peacefulness after a meditation retreat, the peak experience of falling in love, or a spiritual awakening, stirs up the murky mud from the depths of our psyche, bringing the darkness into clearer view. We awaken the demons from the dark folds of our unconscious and find ourselves raging, or hollow and sorrowful, after a delicious interlude of light and love. So often, we may feel we are moving backwards rather than forward in our spiritual growth, as we enter that dank valley that St. John of the Cross called “the dark night of the soul”.

Every beginning marks the end of something. Says Marianne Williamson, “It’s when we face the darkness squarely in the eye – in ourselves and in the world – that we begin at last to see the light. And that is the alchemy of personal transformation. In the midst of the deepest, darkest night, when we feel most humbled by life, the faint shadow of our wings begins to appear. Only when we have faced the limits of what we can do, does it begin to dawn on us the limitlessness of what God can do.”

Many of us enter our spiritual and psychological growth as consumers, shopping around for therapists, healers, gurus, to get us “fixed” more quickly. Some of us compare ourselves to other, “more spiritually evolved” people than ourselves, only to judge ourselves as lacking. The competitive, consumer model will not work if we want authentic lives. There are many astrological significators for the various stages of our growth. These celestial cycles are often painful and necessarily slow. “The caterpillar is luckier than we are. It goes through its transformation in the relative peace and security of a cocoon. We, however, may be in the middle of a profound shift in our unfoldment and growth and yet, more often than not, are expected to go on with our daily life as if nothing is happening,” says Dr. Roberto Assagioli, founder of psychosynthesis. These messy crises are a natural part of the cycle of growth. We plummet from the peaks dishevelled and disheartened by what seems to be the enormity of the forces that obstruct our movement to where we long to be. When we hear, “you were much better before you started meditating/ going to therapy/yoga…” know our mettle is being tested. When we flatline into despair, go a little further. Anatole France says, “All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.” It is in the landslides of change, as we are covered with the muddy debris of our choices, that we discover our alignment with the seasons of our lives, our belonging to this beautiful Earth. It is when we courageously climb down from the mountain, do we discover a new landscape, a new season in our lives…. Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide. This is for you, Bev …

I took my love and I took it down
I climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
‘Til the landslide brought me down

Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail thru the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Mmm Mmm… I don’t know… Mmm Mmm… Mmm Mmm…

Well, I’ve been afraid of changing
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Children get older
I’m getting older too