Mental, Emotional, Physical or Spiritual?

Chiron Files by Eric Francis

Dear Friend and Reader:

Once someone explained to me that the distinction between jazz and blues had more to do with sorting things out in the record store than it did with meaningful differences in the music. To hear the terms, one would get the mistaken idea that they are entirely unrelated things. In fact, they are entirely related, most notably by being music.

That's how it often is with categories of any kind, and that's how it is with some we use often -- mental, emotional and physical. We could add 'spiritual' to that list, too.

The thing about categories is that they do as much excluding as they do including. If you say 'mental' then you're implying that whatever you're talking about has nothing to do with the body. If you say 'physical' you imply just physical.

If you say 'spiritual' you imply everything else is unspiritual. Often categories have no relationship to what they supposedly describe. White people are not really white and black people are not black. We refer to black, white and Latino but Latino is not a color.

When we say 'mental' we might mean emotional or spiritual. Usually both have plenty in common with one's physical reality. The charts for spring 2011 are full of illustrations of the crossovers between these seemingly separate realities. One example is how Aquarius (the mental dimension) and Pisces (the emotional and sometimes the spiritual dimension) have been morphing into one sign.

Neptune (a planet associated with Pisces) has been in Aquarius for more than 12 years, and it's about to cross back and forth over the line between the two signs three times between now and early 2012. This draws a connection between the mental, the spiritual and the emotional. The idea is that they are different expressions of the same thing. Take a few chords from blues, lighten up the riff, and you've got jazz.

Meanwhile, Uranus, a planet associated with Aquarius, has been crossing back and forth between Pisces and Aries for the past year, morphing those two signs and carrying over energy from Aquarius. Aries is hot blooded and passionate, but it's also about physical strength and stamina. Uranus adds the dimension of mental innovation and invention.

When the Sun crosses over the Aries equinox point in a couple of weeks, it will make a conjunction to Uranus. Meanwhile Jupiter, the traditional ruling planet of Pisces, is in Aries, carrying some of that energy over to its neighbor as well.

In effect, Aquarius, Pisces and Aries are currently acting like one sign. There's something going on here -- personality integration. Except for the fact that personality is a category, and we really don't know what it means. Is it part of the soul? Some say no. I say that it is an aspect of a person. What we think of as the mind (Aquarius, Uranus) is getting expressed through the body (Aries, Sun) and mixed with the soul (Pisces, Jupiter, Neptune) and also with what we sometimes think of as the feeling body or astral body.

Do these categories mean anything? They mean a lot less than the statement that as the astrology of the spring and indeed the next few years develops, we will have increasing access to all the dimensions of who we are -- if we want to access those inner experiences.

This column is called the Chiron Files, and it's worth taking a close look at the particular influence of that planet on its new home, Pisces. Chiron is the original astrological factor that blurs the boundaries. Buzzing around between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus, Chiron is usually associated with the signs Virgo and Sagittarius. So that's a lot of different qualities bundled up into one thing that's a little like an asteroid and a little more like a comet.

Chiron is like an un-kaleidoscope which, instead of fracturing an image into things that make no sense, reassembles things that make no sense into something that is perfectly understandable.

To me Chiron in Pisces has a few basic messages. One is that everything exists on a continuum. There are not so many hard and fast boundaries and rules, but it's good to know where you are on the spectrum at any given time so you can respond appropriately.

Another message of Chiron in Pisces is that existence is holographic. Everything we experience is a sample of everything else. Perception is based on seeing differences, and those are in turn based on the differences we already have within our minds. Chiron is not only saying that we can see the world as whole, but also that as we see ourselves as whole, we will begin to see the world that way.

Yours & truly,

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