By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
IT'S A good thing that the Neptune/Saturn energy is behind us; I could use a vacation from unreality -- it's exhausting. In the past weeks, life has taken on a surreal quality that seems positively mythic (not that it hasn't been sneaking up on us by bits and pieces for years).
The political junkies are bone-weary, with just about everything the government tells us quickly refuted by facts, sometimes issued by their own agencies. For the pop culture aficionados, news of Lindsay Lohan's recent "successful" stint in rehab was knocked topsy-turvy by this week's headline that she'd received a DUI and was nabbed for possession of cocaine, less than two weeks after release. These last years of disinformation have turned many of us cynical, unable to believe most anything that comes down the pipe and fearful for the future. We're hungry for something authentic, truthful, real. Perhaps that's why the Democratic debate hosted by CNN in collaboration with YouTube seemed an energizing success; not the tight and practiced responses from candidates, particularly, but the filmed questions provided by citizens, starting with the guy who began his clip with "Wassup?"
The kind of dishonesty we've come to expect from government, and faithfully transcribed by mainstream media, exacts a price. George Bush now has an approval rating of 25% -- only one out of four people in this nation thinks he's worthy of his office, and the numbers of those who want him impeached are closing in on 50%. That's due to get worse as transiting Saturn moves to oppose the Moon in the US chart (the
Sibley chart), exact on July 28. The Moon represents the public mood and Saturn demands accountability. Meanwhile, Mr. Bush, determined not to let reality intrude on him, seems cheerful and, amazingly, confident. Not all of us have the president's Jupiter Sun square to keep us unrealistically optimistic, however.
Most of us have entered, willingly or un, the slipstream of change. Pluto's visit to the Galactic Core shoved the last of us into those quickly moving waters, and we're going somewhere, like it or not. Most of us don't like it, thank you very much; we like the idea of change, but not the shake-up that comes with it. We'd rather stay with what we know and trust -- but what would that be, these days? Recognize any of the signposts you see around you? Feel secure with how things are going? Some of us are just waking up to discover we don't know what's going on or why. What's going on is complex, but why seems obvious. We're being asked to grow; the universe has pushed us into it. Like elective surgery, that's something we'd just as soon put off 'til later. But remember the glass -- it will be half full or half empty, depending on how we choose to see this.
Here's a happy thought -- if we feel like we've slipped a cog, that we're too tired to care, that we'd just as soon throw in the towel; if we find ourselves gripped by despair or wake up depressed, wading through confusion and disorientation on a daily basis, I think we're exactly where we need to be. If we participated in the Fire the Grid project and now find our heads buzzing, our solar plexuses activated for intuitive reception, our brains hosting occasional snatches of a vision of how the world COULD be, we're learning how to swim in the fast-moving waters of this change. "I never said it was easy," goes a bit of wisdom on a bumper sticker, "I said it was worth it."
We're now in the early degrees of our Venus transit in Virgo, and the feelings described in the previous paragraph are part and parcel of what we're being asked to review. Venus defines what is valuable to us; the retrograde will allow us some time to reflect on that. What we value in our individual lives will create the collective paradigm we hope to enter, and that cannot be a casual review, a simplistic one. We need to flex some spiritual muscle now, do the work we've put off until later; "later" is now. We have sent ourselves mixed messages about what is valuable, we've given too much power away to "how things are." We've allowed our reality to be determined by others. We've put our heads down and walked through life trying to "make do" with what we find there. We know what we want, but not how to get it -- we know what we don't want, but not how to stop it. We haven't asked ourselves the hard questions.
I read a recent
op-ed that defines some of the problems we encounter with our thought process. It was written about Michael Vick, the athlete accused of being a dogfight promoter, and was subtitled "A Study of Outrage and Degrees." I highly recommend it to you, as an example of the kind of internal assessments we each need to make. The author himself had no answers, only questions. That is our current condition. The wisdom traditions tell us that such a space is holy. It is an awareness of the flaws in the status quo and the conflict within ourselves that allows them to continue -- it's the path toward changing our perception, toward enlightenment. We can't rely on sound bites any more -- we need to dig into our thought patterns with gusto. After years, decades, eras asleep to our own human potential, this is a welcome place to be. We're in the flow of change, long overdue.
The Sun has moved into lazy, pleasure-loving Leo and that should provide us some summer respite from the restless Gemini and moody Cancer placements that came before. We will likely have some time to relax, to play, to purr in the company of those we love; take advantage of this warm, easy energy to ask yourself some of those difficult but critical questions you've put off. Take baby steps if you like, but begin now. Determine not so much what's wrong with your life -- that's probably obvious to you -- but rather, discover what's right. Give yourself time to appreciate those things, while allowing the critical eye of this Venus to dispassionately pick apart the things that are no longer working for you, or for the world. Discover where your comfort zones and habits are working against you, where your conflicted thoughts have bottled up your momentum.
We have help from the cosmos. As the granddaddy of modern astrology, Dane Rudhyar said, "Man is surrounded by spirit as fish by water...by being aware of the presence and sustaining power, a man may avoid the desperate feeling of aloneness and alienation." The same stars shine on each of us, the same energy challenges present to all of us -- we're all going somewhere, together. Astrology so often offers us difficult moments of growth but seldom throws all the planetary placements into chaos at the same time; the universe is amazingly balanced. We must find our own balance as well.
Don't be afraid of the changes; they bring blessing with them. They look like chaos, they feel like exhaustion, they challenge our daily perceptions but they will bring us to a new place. Perhaps in that new reality, we will learn how to embrace change as opportunity, and let go of the old "learning through pain and suffering" paradigm. A stroll down the long halls of history would show us that repeating pattern, and up until now, we've crawled along, accepting the wisdom reflected to us in tiny increments, modest adjustments. But if our species is to survive our dark pockets of hatefulness and prejudice and nihilism, then we must welcome in a leap -- of faith, of consciousness. As the old paradigm closes out, the new one is just taking form and it feels like everything is out of control. But in control or out of it, you're still you, life's still life -- you're never going to get "there," wherever you think that is, and, as always, your only point of power is within you, and within this moment.
Try to get comfortable with the notion that life is a journey, ever in flux, moving along. Open up your mind to find those thoughts that no longer serve the reality you seek. Make change your new best friend, if you can, because it's here and it has gifts for those who will take them. Begin the baby steps, because -- well, you know -- I never said it was easy, I said it was worth it.
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