The Finale of Love in The Zodiac
Another way of accessing the riches of astrology is to think of it as a language for energies we can cultivate. It’s so important to remember that nothing is fixed! Our birth charts are not us. They are maps. They are language. They are not who we are. This is true of diagnoses, personality typing systems, etc etc etc.
There’s always a gap between the name for a thing and the thing, and this is not a problem, it’s just something that it helps to remember so we don’t get too confused in thinking we are stuck. Being stuck is in fact the mind holding on to concepts and memories that are not this time. It’s a form of meditation. We’re always meditating! Which is also good to remember so that we can notice what we are meditating on!
The other day my family of four was walking from our house to the beach, during our favorite beach, which is winter beach, when it gets dark early. It was our first winter beach of the season and it was blustery out. My bb jr, who is 3, yelled out, “there’s a mountain and we get to go up it!” and sometimes when she speaks, as children tend to do, it’s like god’s voice yelling straight at me. We GET to go up it!
This is, I think, at its best, what the fire archetype is all about. The buddhist word for it is virya. Whipping up a vibe of inspiration, which changes how everything looks. The mountain was a sand dune, and I was indeed feeling tired to even walk up it. But she reminded me, we get to!
This is the kind of love that might be the most important to me to cultivate, and the most forgotten(?) The love of life itself. Excluding nothing from the warmth of this love. This is what it feels like to exist in this body, on this planet, in this moment. To get to walk up a sand dune aka mountain. All of the miracles involved in that being possible, in this body - I could spend a year counting those miracles alone.
One of the ways I receive and remember this love, is through not astrology itself per se, but through witnessing others in the container that is an astrology reading. I get to look at another and see, Oh! This is a life! Here in front of me is another facet of the prism that is life!
In a life, there is stress. So much stress! There is heartache. There is heartbreak. There is devastation. There is anxiety. There is illness. There are injuries. There are falling outs. There are wounds the person has enacted on another. There are wounds the person has received. There are wounds the person has enacted on themselves. There are massive, troubling, existential questions. There is despair at capitalism. There is despair at murders taking place. Assaults. People starving. There are nervous systems chronically dis-regulated. There is longing for a partner. There is rage at a partner. There is loneliness, chronic arguing, new diagnoses. There is joint pain. There are family deaths. There are family traumas. So many family traumas.
There is rage at online interfaces and health insurance companies, wars, the countless precious human beings exploited, there is fear of AI, there is worry, there is satisfaction in completing a task, there is joy at the ocean air smell, there are breakthroughs. There are years of feeling stuck. There is sleep deprivation. There is regret, the ache of regret. There is disassociation, love, sorrow, apathy. Doubt, plenty of doubt.
This is a life. These and countless other states and conditions are what a life includes. Right now I’m feeling and thinking that enlightenment is accepting that there is no way out of experiencing this range of states; to be in a human life is to be swimming through these waves, endlessly. And importantly, that there’s nothing wrong with us if we are experiencing these states, endlessly, that is just what it is to be alive!
It’s astounding how compelling it is for me to keep assuming enlightenment is not having these states, getting out of these states. But so far, I still keep swimming in these human waters. And I don’t know anyone, I haven’t met anyone (and I have met many “enlightened” people) who doesn’t have them too.
It does feel like what is available to me is that reminder - to listen for those reminders and try to take them in - we GET to climb up this mountain. And feel the massive transformation that love offers.
My friend Tobias helps with this reminder as well. He calls to me, I feel, in a particular silent way. He died 7 years ago very suddenly. And he reminds me - you get to! You get to feel all these things! You get to be in conflict with others, you get to be in doubt, you get to be in pain, these are the states that come with the human landscape, and while in a body, it goes like this. I don’t get to be mad that he didn’t do the dishes when he stayed with me anymore. I don’t get to listen to his existential spirals. I don’t get to receive his singing voicemails. My kids don’t get to know him (the most painful loss of all)!
When you die, when you lose your body, you lose the ability to feel all of these things (maybe? who knows?) but you also lose the ability to feel all of these things!
So, if you are feeling like you have not done something right, like you have not hacked your life enough, like you should not be feeling whatever you are feeling or you should be further along in whatever timeline you have made up or inherited about where you should be in this human thing, I offer this reminder of love via my child, and via Tobias, we get to. I don’t know why. It is basically bananas, a divine-mystery-koan what tf we are even doing here. But somehow, the love part makes it feel like we get to.
We get to walk up the mountain, until we don’t. I love you.