Saturn and The Paradoxical Chemistry of Acceptance

(This is a part of a fall series I’m writing on love through the zodiac. You can find them all on my blog through this tag: love in the zodiac. Blogs! Who knew! Hahahaha tags are magic. Here’s another one you can check out: circle of support.)

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There’s some mysterious relationship between Saturn and our planet Earth. I could say that about any planet, and it might be because I am ruled by Saturn, but I think of Saturn as the one offering us lessons on how to actually live on this exact Earth. Neptune, for example, (as I wrote about last week) might teach us how to bring things from other realms, or how to transcend this earth life.

But Saturn is guiding us back to right where we are. There are so, so many variations on what this lesson looks like in individual lives. Saturn rules the realms of our experience of limitations, which basically could be categorized as incarnation hahahaha. (Money, survival, our bodies, structures of all kinds, directions, location, etc.) Art calls limitations constraints, offers a reversal of thought toward something we often experience as painful, which is part of why art is one of my methods of salvation. Art says not only are limitations important, but they are a prerequisite for making art at all. We could say each of our particular lives, bodies, life conditions, are a set of constraints, that we are here to make art from/with/within. By “make art” here I mean utilize, transform, compost, reverse.

So the lesson from Saturn on love happened in my yoga class this week. I had a headache, and I didn’t want to be there. Pretty early on in the class I had a powerful urge to leave. Now, on other days, sometimes, the thing to do is leave, right? Leaving is welcome here. But today I did not. I went into child’s pose. I have recently discovered a new annoying truth: child’s pose hurts the backs of my arms. My shoulders are tight af these days. So I moved my arms so that they didn’t hurt. And I repeated my lately mantra, which is simply Stay. I get this mantra from Pema Chödrön (who remains an evergreen support).

Stay. See what happens. Very gently and loving. Like, you don’t have to be here. You can leave. But also, just see what happens if you stay. Don’t make a story about what the whole hour will be. Don’t jump ahead and summarize. And then, it changed. My headache shifted. I did a plank pushup. Not because I was pushing through it. Not because I felt obligated. Because I (by the grace of one million people and species and occurrences congealed into something I call god these days) stayed, and just remained open to what might happen. I felt the deliciousness of a plank pushup, the delight of effort, of using this magic body.

I had this funny realization that that’s what yoga is for hahahahahaha. Funny as in, absurdly obvious. Like that’s what meditation is for. That’s what these practices are for. To practice the thing in a controlled environment, to be able to translate it to the messier less controlled environments. The controlled environment reduces inputs, so it is easier to see what the mind is doing. If I followed the story my mind was telling, jumping ahead, I would have missed the rest of the hour, the magic that was waiting there. That’s okay if I did, I do that plenty. But the joy of not missing the rest of that hour it is big.

The lesson from Saturn, from limitation, for me today is Stay. See what happens.

With my kid when he is yelling and melting down and I have no idea what to do: Stay. See what happens.

When he asks me about school shootings: Stay. See what happens.

When my partner and I arrive at a disagreement, a feeling of a road block: Stay. See what happens.

There’s just something so incredible about the spirit shift that lies in that intention: Stay. What it opens. It’s not frantically rushing toward solutions. It’s not leaving the discomfort. Another word for it might be acceptance.

Saturn teaches me about the paradoxical chemistry of acceptance. I always get freaked out about acceptance because it seems passive, and fear arises that I will then continue to let awful things happen (as if I am somehow the let-er). But acceptance is freedom because it is an opening. This is why it is paradoxical and this is why it is chemistry. It opens my hands, jaw, heart, mind, to other ideas, other angles. But I only experience the sensation of freedom if I come to accept something that is difficult for me to accept. Something I experience resistance to, I have aversion to, I want so desperately to be different from how it is. Difficulty and distance from our beloveds are the frequent conditions through which we locate the love that abides. It’s a paradox. It’s chemistry.

Saturn vibes of dutch oven, wooden spoon, coconut broth, stove. Does it get any more Saturn?!

Saturn says: this life. This particular water bill I need to sit on hold for half an hour to ask about. This exact kitchen floor full of bread crumbs and cilantro leaves and oat milk remnants.This koan of labor and love entwinement called a marriage. This particular 45-year-old body with all its simultaneous living and dying. This particular block in this particular neighborhood. This specific astounding grief at school shootings and this specific churning stomach plus loss of words as to how to explain it to this precious being I get to temporarily call my child. This terror at microplastics as I change the laundry. This foggy weather, this upper middle back ache, this limited inhale capacity, sitting in these camp chairs in front of our house, watching our kids ride bikes.

Saturn says: use these conditions to awaken within.

Stay. See what happens.