Being optimistic and fairly foolish I thought I might be able to manage a 1 minute video on this topic. I thought, forget everything going on. It’s a minute for chrissakes! I thought this would be a better format with which to make my point because half the story would be across my face but I couldn’t manage so y’all have to just remember what I look like and that I am real.

So on my daughter… she is in very bad shape. And I know people are curious and a few of them have written but I can tell you right now I am not going to talk about this except in the most general terms and I want to tell you why.

Continue reading My Daughter, My Life, What Goes On Around Here, Storytelling, Jupiter In Capricorn

Now when I came across that tribute to Grant Lewi, I was thinking still thinking about the alchemy blog and CK’s comment. For some reason that comment deeply penetrated my psyche, which I really appreciate by the way. Nothing I like better than being pregnant!

So struck by the comment my mind flipped into gear and I started thinking about learning astrology and more specifically, how for me it was an alchemical process. And I have always thought it was this way for everyone. I’ve thought that this is how everyone learns anything.

Take astrology. You want to learn astrology so you read a book. If you’re lucky it’s a good one. It’s not too boring so you figure you’ll read another. Next thing you know, if you get the bug, you’ve read four or five or eight books and right about here you consider really cracking down.

And if you do that… well pretty soon you’ve read ten or twenty or thirty books and things are starting to gel. And at some point you want to try out your new knowledge, so you start to talk to people. You look at their charts or your talk about your own. And if you keep it up, eventually you start “reading” charts.

And at first you’ve got to have your books there so you can look things up and offer up pieces. There is no synergy. You can’t really read a chart, you can just look it up quickly! You fumble along but if you keep this up things improve.

Eventually you become familiar with certain things. Certain aspects you understand. Or maybe you get the 2nd house, or Jupiter really well. But you still have no ideas of your own. And by now you can recite what other people have said or written… you need your books less, but still none of it originates inside of you.

But if you keep it up… if you try and try, eventually there a tipping point and things start to open up for you. It’s like this: Eureka!

And then some more time passes… more time, more time, more time and more time. More time passes, more books, more watching, more reading, more studying and then one day… one glorious day, you have something of your own to say about something you see. You have something original to say about a house or a planet, or an aspect or an entire chart, or whatever it is in your hand when it happens for you.

And at that point you’re becoming an astrologer. Astrology is no longer something you have memorized but something you have absorbed and assimilated… and this to me, is an alchemical process. Everything goes into the pot. Soup, nuts, snails and puppy dog tails and it boils, boils, boils, boils. And you boil, boil, boil, boil. And if you get out of the pot you lose!! If you quit, you lose!

But if you stay in there… if you stay with it, alchemy takes place. And all the sudden you can look at those symbols and know exactly what they mean. And how this occurs is completely mysterious.

So this is how I learn. It’s a completely visceral experience and it’s fairly painful. It hurts me. And I wonder if this is universal. So is it? I have always thought so but now I wonder. Is there a more detached, intellectual way to learn?

How do you learn?

CK writes on the previous blog about abuse, torture and alchemy:

“Good Luck getting me in the box, to get out if necessary I’ll chew one or all my limbs off (?!)”

~~

When I read this comment I was thrilled because it was completely unexpected and just of left field from my perspective. My first thought was that everyone will go through a “dark night of the soul” at some point, like it or not. We all have a Pluto transit eventually. But as the day and the week went on I continued to think about this.

And CK apparently represents the other end of the spectrum from my friend who is looking for the absolute edge of the edge when he signs on for torture school, never mind, goes on one mission after another after another, after another where his being killed is the most likely outcome. And both ways of being seem completely valid to me.

Where are you on this continuum when it comes to seeking (or not seeking) intense transformative experience? 1 = CK, 10, the Special Forces soldier.

And what’s the Pluto / Scorpio situation in your chart?

So on this un-comfort topic, here’s some meat for your grinder. Awhile back I was talking to my ex, the career Special Forces soldier. And he has been through virtually every military training in existence on this planet. Internationally, I mean. And one of the things he’s been through is torture school.

Now they don’t call it that. It has a fancy name, but what they do is torture you to get you prepared and teach you what to do in the event you are captured and tortured. And one of the things they do is put you in a box.

They put you in a black box, maybe 4′ X 4′ which means you cannot stand up. And they leave you in there for a long time. For days. They leave you in there for DAYS.

So just think about that. How’s that for an un-comfort zone?

Well considering I am at least slightly claustrophobic it makes me very nervous to even try to consider this. And I at all sure I would be able to cope with something like this for even ten minutes. But I figure if I were in there, there would be two choices. Either go crazy in the box, or you find a way to be comfortable in this very uncomfortable place. And suppose you manage? Suppose you’re successful?

Well if you’re successful, I imagine your comfort zone is expanded beyond belief. “You want to put me in a box? Bring it on! I have ways of dealing with that…”

Not that he said that, I’m just guessing. And that has got to be a powerful feeling. To walk around knowing that if it comes down to it, you can endure this level of discomfort. But I can see a shadow side.

Compare his experience with someone who grew up in an abusive home. That person also has an expanded comfort zone and unfortunately it’s very common they use it by getting into abusive relationships as an adult. Noooooooooo!

Should the soldier find a 4′ X 4′ box, climb in and shut the lid, just because he can? I don’t think so. And just because you can take a beating doesn’t mean you go find someone to beat you!

So I just think it would be nice if people who have been forced to endure and survive this kind of thing (abuse) could turn their experience into an asset and I thought this story might help. Because it’s not enough to just stay in the uncomfortable place. We’re looking for alchemy here… a Pluto / Scorpio thing.

alchemy

1 : a medieval chemical science and speculative philosophy aiming to achieve the transmutation of the base metals into gold, the discovery of a universal cure for disease, and the discovery of a means of indefinitely prolonging life

2 : a power or process of transforming something common into something special

3 : an inexplicable or mysterious transmuting

So what about you? Have you ever stayed in your version of that black box long enough for this to occur? Tell us.

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pictured - Pluto, Agostino Carracci, 1557

Speaking of pain and that last artist post…I’ve had a personal crisis over the week or ten days. Maybe you’ve noticed I’ve not been posting so frequently and the freakish struggle I’m having behind the scenes is why.

Now it’s not that big a deal for me to have a crisis, because I have them all the time. I have a life that is full to overflowing with intense trauma and at this stage of my life, I can’t say that I care. I quite like being me and I could not be me…I would not be me, if even one shred of my life was changed.

So anyway, I was talking to my editor on the phone this week. He’s a close friend and I was in a state of shock at the time, post acute trauma.

“I’m sure this is good for me,” I said. “I will do something good with this. I’m sure it will benefit me, I just don’t know how yet,” I explained.

I can’t remember exactly how he responded, but I know he was somewhat incredulous I would say something like that in the state I was in. A couple days later, I was talking to someone else and better able to articulate my feelings about this:

“I don’t want a life without pain. I have no interest in avoiding pain. I will take the pain! How else can I do my job? If people write and they are in pain, how am I going to be able to respond if I am not willing to feel? If I stay in my head about these problems and try to write, I will have nothing to say. It would be completely worthless. And I like feeling things. I like being compassionate. I like feeling things, period. And as far as I am concerned, there’s no reason for me to be on this planet if I am not going to feel pain and channel it, considering this is how I’m strung and what I am supposed to do…”

So what about you? How do handle pain?

Do you feel it? Do you seek it out? Or do you medicate it and try to avoid it at all costs?

~ skip to Pain - Redux

~~
pictured - Pluto, Agostino Carracci, 1557