INSIDE EVERY FELT AVERSION is an unarticulated judgment – a facet of ego we find unforgivable. What we fail to appreciate is that this condemned facet is just one of many other cut faces on a greater archetypal jewel. In the throes of aversion, then, we don’t merely judge specific [...]]]> We don’t forgive egos – only archetypes.

INSIDE EVERY FELT AVERSION is an unarticulated judgment – a facet of ego we find unforgivable. What we fail to appreciate is that this condemned facet is just one of many other cut faces on a greater archetypal jewel. In the throes of aversion, then, we don’t merely judge specific aspects of ego; we trash entire matrices – the very archetypal diamonds in which consciousness is embedded.

The advantage of becoming archetypally literate (see Styles of Awakening Training) is that whenever aversion strikes, we have the language and perceptual acuity with which to stop and identify the innocent, totally valid style of awakening that this judged person is so clumsily attempting to employ. We feel their positive intention and we know how to support them. In short, we learn to move more and more quickly from aversion to archetype to appreciation of the One Being in the throes of waking up to itself.

Each of the twelve archetypes has their own favorite targets to aim judgment at. To fully unravel the motivations behind a person’s particular areas of harshness and bias one would need to look at their whole chart. However, some valuable insights about judgment that apply equally to all signs can be harvested from the Virgo/Pisces polarity.

The Virgo part of us is driven by the instinct to make order out of chaos – to attend to inner and outer environments in such a way that they glorify and accentuate the innocent simplicity and intelligence of this seemingly random and impersonal universe. And what happens when the quest for an outpicturing of life’s sacred order gets into the hands of ego? Heartless fault-finding.

If there’s any hope of washing this snap judgment from our eyes and cutting through ego’s swirling fog of verdicts it is through understanding what judgment really is: projected self-hatred, which is the ego’s desperate attempt to stop it’s perversely enlivening habit of self-cutting by turning the blade on someone else’s psychic skin. Seen in this light, there’s no such thing as criticalness – only muted cries for love.

How do we break this habit of psychological self-cutting? Perhaps, by cutting even deeper to the very root of Virgo perfectionism and finally getting an honest, meditatively-earned answer to the following question: Why, exactly, is it not a tragedy that the sharp cut of space has chopped us up into these separate, searching egos?

The answer, of course, comes as a shift in Piscean paradigm, not a linear explanation. But if silence could speak, perhaps its answer would sound something like this: With no skin to press up against, the seamless field of sentience would have no one to kiss into shivery arousal.

Why does the lower-octave Virgo part of us self-injure? For three misguided, but nonetheless logically consistent, reasons:

1) Believed-in judgment is an anti-chaotic.
Judgment is what happens whenever ego feels that a more spacious, provisional interpretation of events would make our lives too mysterious and disorienting for us to psychologically cope and successfully navigate the world.

2) Believed-in judgment validates the existence of a separate somebody who knows.
To the time-bound sense of self, it’s not important whether our mental assessments are true or false, self-empowering or self-immolating, so long as the fog of mental interpretations remains thick enough to obscure the ego-dissolving face of the present moment.

3) Believed-in judgments, when shared, provide a safely-scripted, heart-protected illusion of intimacy.
From ego’s point of view, the experience of One Being is overrated- a kind of faux intimacy that is either too emotionally flat or psychically incestuous to truly enjoy. Why resort to such surreal, disorienting ways of connecting when you can unite via visceral, unambiguous zaps of shared aversion?

Notice that all three justifications for self-cutting have one thing in common: the desire to shoo away disorientation – the lower-octave expression of its opposite sign, Pisces. Until we learn to trust ourselves to groundedly navigate our inner and outer worlds without strongly believed-in stories about who we and others are, the temptation to orient ourselves via judgment will be impossible to resist.

And how do we develop this grounded kind of storyless-ness (this Virgo kind of Pisces)? Simple. The higher octave expression of Pisces: meditation.

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There [...]]]> WHAT IF A ROADMAP TO AWAKENING was built into the very fabric of the cosmos? What if a pathway to the Buddhist middle path – the ego-dissolving center between mind’s wildly swinging extremes – was laid out for us in the pattern of the planets? This is the essential, but too often hidden, insight of astrology. 

There is, of course, no formula for storyless presence; it has no precise preconditions. But there are archetypal hints – a grid of thematic extremes that, in their balancing, may help us collapse the duality of matter and spirit and return us to our storyless center. In simplest terms, this means learning to synthesize the six archetypal dualities: 

• Independence/Intimacy (Aries/Libra)
• Stability/Metamorphosis (Taurus/Scorpio)
• Information/Synthesis (Gemini/Sagittarius)
• Nurture/Discipline (Cancer/Capricorn)
• Hierarchy/Equality (Leo/Aquarius)
• Discernment/Faith (Virgo/Pisces)

To achieve these six integrations, both sides of each artificially held-apart duality must be fully understood and appreciated as half of a paired lesson in love. When we learn to love both aspects of a dichotomy, the dichotomy collapses and gratitude releases us into an all-embracing nondual dimension. Christians call this “the descent of the holy spirit.” Buddhists call it “enlightenment.”

This awakened synthesis of poles happens by swinging faster and faster between them until the opposites flicker together with such rapidity they become perceptually fused. The purpose of astrology is to help us define and make more conscious the  polarities we are vibrating between so we can more discerningly meditate them back together – each side constantly pointing us back to the middle.

In truth, then, there are not so much twelve signs as there are six pairs of opposites, and each integration represents a particular pathway back to Oneness. But in order to stabilize in this ego-dissolved center point, we must first learn to understand and skillfully manage each of its twelve poles.

Our Journey begins with the Aries/Libra polarity and continues counterclockwise around the wheel to the Pisces/Virgo polarity (see zodiac wheel below):

Aries/Libra: Independence/Intimacy
If the pendulum swings too far towards Aries, we become interpersonally divorced, self-centered and start acting as if we need no one else. The psychologically corrective states of loneliness and isolation arise.

If the pendulum swings too far towards Libra, individual truth is sacrificed to the god of interpersonal harmony, leading to inner emptiness and vacuity. This then drives us to overly-individuate, often via expressions of insensitivity, anger and conflict.

The resolution of the Aries/Libra polarity is the realization that all precious, but imaginary, “others” exist as mirrors in which we might come into a more steady, full-spectrum embrace of our true nature. What happens when we spread our awareness equally between self and other? The space between us becomes as conscious and alive as the beings who appear within it. Tibetans call this, “licking honey from the razor’s edge.” We enjoy the sweetness of bridging the interpersonal gap even as we appreciate its unreality. Infatuations are re-aimed at disowned parts of ourself. Aversions are used to highlight unforgiven imperfections. What do we “get” from others? The taste of honey and an uncut tongue. 

Taurus/Scorpio: Stability/Metamorphosis
If we swing too far towards Taurus, we become miserably secure, fixed and complacent. Dullness and overindulgence pull upheaval closer to us. We are unconsciously driven toward the enlivenment of chaos, crisis and the indiscriminate destruction of built up structures.

If we swing too far towards Scorpio, we get overly obsessed with shadow truths and impermanence, become psychologically overwhelmed, stinging our self and others with too many toxic, indigestible revelations. Chaos and upheaval drive us toward the overvaluing of Taurean stability, jealous attachments and rigidly orthodox values and world views.

The swings of this polarity are constantly attempting to hone us in on what is truly sustainable: our unshakable, meditative fullness of being, without which all material comfort and psycho-emotional truth-telling is quickly drained of meaning. As we remember that all egos are actors in need of a firm, provisional stage on which to perform their Self-realization dance, our needs for stability and transformation start dancing together, neither one stepping on the toes of the other.

Gemini/Sagittarius: Information/Synthesis
When we swing too hard in the direction of Gemini, our attention becomes fragmented and we indiscriminately devour isolated facts and random experience. We lose touch with the ultimate meaning and direction of our lives. As feelings of pointlessness and disintegration build up, our thirst for meaning may drive us into obsessive Sagittarian study, preachiness and involvement with  fundamentalist groups and philosophies.

When the pendulum swings too far towards Sagittarius, we lose the ability to tune into the details and Tao of each moment. We become addicted to abstract principle and impatient with anything mundane. As our search for the philosophical or geographical overview deems more and more ideas, moments and relationships “provincial, petty and already known,” we develop feelings of remoteness, dislocation, and nihilism. This makes the  distracted, moment-to-moment repartee of Gemini look irresistibly straight-forward and connecting.

The frustrating swings of the Gemini/Sagittarius polarity are trying to center us in a third kind of knowing, born neither from spontaneous impression or overarching preconception. Residing at the center of these two poles, seeker and seeking step aside, baptizing us into a graceful rhythm of curious, moment-to-moment listening and purpose-harvesting self inquiry. By learning to transpersonally witness the divinely told story of our life, we come to savor each cleverly articulated turn of phrase even as we feel into the ultimate plot.

Cancer/Capricorn: Private nurture/public discipline
When we lean too hard in the direction of Cancer, we become emotionally dependent and needy — regressively shrinking from what appears to be a cold, uncaring world that offers no heart-friendly forms of service in which to nurture ourselves or others. This leads to feelings of ingrownness and insular despair which, in turn, make us cling to any professional sense of identity and belonging we can get — even if it’s heartless and unfulfilling.

Leaning too hard in the Capricorn direction, we become overly image-conscious and ambitious — equating our personal worth with our reputation and professional status. This leads to over-work and feelings of austerity, enslavement and aridity. To compensate, we may be driven toward insecure, dependent people who overly evoke our emotions or through whom we can live vicariously.

The purpose of the Cancer/Capricorn swing is to help us hone in on that steadily vulnerable sense of authority that arises when we are meditatively in tune with our soul’s natural heart service — whether it brings us anonymity or exposure, poverty or riches. By putting self-discipline in the service of a caring that comes natural to us, the burden of the separate self naturally dissolves, allowing us to selflessly self-promote and successfully raise others up alongside us.

Leo/Aquarius: Hierarchy/Equality
When the pendulum swings too far into Leo, self worth seems to depend on our confidence and charisma. No matter how much we are admired or respected, however, we feel alienated, unseen and alone behind an impossible-to-shed mask. To compensate, ego drives us into individuality-denying relationships and overly idealistic Aquarian communities that under-validate us and snuff out our creative fire in the name of some repressive idea of equality.

Leaning too hard in the Aquarian direction, we take on the identity of the hierarchy-bashing community activist, impatient with repressive structures and authority. The more resistant people are to our righteous, reforming jabs, the more our identity feels threatened. This creates feelings of being an impotent, unappreciated outsider. To recover a sense of self-worth and belonging, we re-enflame a feeling of Leonine “specialness” by unconsciously stepping into the same kind of autocratic, ineffective, leadership style we previously rebelled against.

The synthesis of the Hierarcy/Equality polarity happens naturally when we develop a relaxed sense of the world as a community of eternally marching souls whose evolution is not, ultimately, slowed or quickened by egalitarian activists or inspiring leaders. What matters is not whether we appear humble or proud, but that we take on the role in which we will, for the sake of all souls, most thoroughly self-actualize. In doing so, a sense of specialness and equality arise together as we realize that a good leader is one who makes the team think they did it themselves and a good team is the one in which each person exercises superior leadership in the area of their expertise.

Virgo/Pisces: Discernment/Faith
Straying too far into Virgo, our soul worships discrimination over flow and makes an identity out of efficiency, planning and service. Since the play of form is like smoke — constantly blowing away — our tidy Virgo facts and formulas are continuously undermined by unforeseen Piscean variables, causing us to become obsessive, anal and perfectionistic. Seeking relief from this tightly controlled, formulaic approach, our ego overcompensates by swinging too hard into intoxicating Picean faith and indiscriminate merging — hygienically flushing all logic and pragmatism down the drain.

Swinging blindly into Pisces, we make a self out of idiot compassion and a difference-denying idea of oneness. This quickly devolves into martyrdom, collusion and “saving.” As our alpha-humbleness becomes more and more physically and psychologically depleting, ego thrusts us into harshly severing and clinically administered acts of boundary-assertion.

Virgo/Pisces integration is achieved by becoming mystically realistic – relieving real human suffering by soberly and clear-headedly attending to the unique needs of different situations, people and organizations even as we remember that we’re all safe at home in the heart of God. Indeed, it is this relaxed faith in the ultimate perfection of all worldly outcomes – be they chaotic or painful – that equips us with the relaxed, nurse-like focus needed to balance subjective intuition with diagnostically accurate analysis. Our heart breaks for those who suffer from lost awareness of “the condition of all conditions,” but not so much that we overly empathize and lose sight of the clear yes’s and no’s that make for real human support.

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1) Driving merrily along, lost in the buoyant beat of some smooth jazz station– oblivious to your toxic wake and the incalculable plant, animal and human sacrifice that allows you to fly across eroding rock trails made bump-less every night at 3:00 AM by growling, dinosaur-sized [...]]]> Which of the following “motorist” metaphors do you find more appealing:

1) Driving merrily along, lost in the buoyant beat of some smooth jazz station– oblivious to your toxic wake and the incalculable plant, animal and human sacrifice that allows you to fly across eroding rock trails made bump-less every night at 3:00 AM by growling, dinosaur-sized machines manned by bloodshot souls so desperate for food and rent they trade circadian sunlight for freakish floodlight.

2) Inching tentatively along a dusty, deeply potholed country back road that gnaws on expensive, unknown parts of your car’s chassis, alternately triggering fears of a shivery, bone-crumpled night spent alone in the back seat and spontaneous prayers of gratitude for the durability of your vessel as it slows to a self-fumigating, but delusion-free idle that suddenly makes audible an awesome profusion of insects and birds crackling electric in the bushes and trees all around you.

I know. Not the most mouth-watering set of options. But these two gnarly combinations of dark and light describe the two basic topographies available to a soul firmly buckled into the seat of a body/mind.

“Surely there must be an alternate route,” demands ego. “What about equanimity, insight, compassion, Kundalini?” “Oh that,” says our inner Buddha with a sly smile. “That’s just phoenix activity– the soul’s heartbroken response to the dinosaurs and the gnawing.

So, fleshy motorist, which route will you choose?

Option #1 is a form of pleasant automation, or “machine mind.” It’s dualistic. It can’t fathom a joy that includes heartbreak. It’s cyncial. To mechanical mind, our only shot at “happiness” is to anesthetize half of our heart so we don’t feel the shades of suffering our ego causes ourself and others.

Option #2 is a form of meditation, or what Tibetans call “natural mind.” It’s nondual. It feels grace in the midst of consciously negotiating inner and outer poisons. It’s innocent. It doesn’t divide or harden people and situations into good and bad categories, preferring, instead, to see all beings and moments as perceptual wombs for the child of pure awareness to mature in.

Ah yes, meditation. These days, whenever I hear this velvety Libran term with all its peace-promising connotations, I flinch, secretly replacing it with a more accurate, urgent and Scorpionic one: “self-reckoning.” This is the art of releasing loving kindness into the mind’s mildly — if not wildly — tortured ambiance.

To be fair, the fruit of meditation (the equanimity that gives rise to wise loving) does indeed have a Libran signature, but the process, itself, can hardly be called “Venusian.” Rare is the person who will baldly admit that the sweet spring of pure awareness trickles under a thorny tangle of self-betrayal habits, and that blood is the price of drinking. Sound like a Libra pastime?

In truth, all twelve archetypes are at play in the practice of learning to abide as witness of the mind. But in this article, I thought I’d shed some light on what I believe is the most essential archetypal challenge that, when fully understood and embraced, may strongly assist us in returning to presence: Aries.

The goal of Aries is the goal of all incarnated beings: a presence-governed ego. In a very simple, straightforward way the Aries path of awakening is the template for all the other styles. Understand the force that “rams” oneness into seemingly separate bodies and you understand the basic steps involved in returning each of the succeeding eleven archetypes back to their true nature.

But how does the archetype that corresponds to the very birth of the individuated ego (I AM), break free of ego? By holding fast to the center of the wheel of desire as it spins crazy around us.

The Wheel of Desire

Buddhism boils all desires down to three:

1-The desire for objects of pleasure.

2-The desire for the sense that we exist.

3-The desire for the sense that we do not exist — do not desire.

These three desire-fires are, in truth, one: the desire to exist in some absolute, independent sense from our own side — apart from God and the seeming “others” that She dances around us. This is quintessential lower-octave Aries: individuation gone rogue. The essence of every ego.

These three desire-fires are also interlocking — circling round in repeating cycles of frustration that proceed according to the following twisted logic:

“If I can attain this object of pleasure (Desire #1), I can, for a moment, have the sense that someone separate and real has attained it (Desire #2).” When the object of desire fails to deliver me the fullness of my being, disappointment arises. In desperation, I then twist my very disappointment into an identity: “I’m suffering, therefore I am” (Desire #2).  (A popular identity-strategy in these crashy/conspiratorial times, no?) When the pain of this me-story becomes unbearable, I turn to desire #3: the desire not to be, not to desire. However, since it is the illusory self that desires this supposed selflessness, the quest for the experience of true being is frustrated yet again so I turn to a ‘new and improved’ object of desire (Desire #1) that promises to make me feel solid and separate (Desire #2).

Round and round we go — every moment, every day, every lifetime.

Moving to the hub of this desire wheel is called “meditation” and, as even the most dilettantish meditator knows, it takes a subtle kind of chivalry to “fear forward,” to remain anchored in the observer, unseduced by the 12 archetypal sirens:

1-Aries Fear: Selflessness

2-Taurus Fear: Groundlessness

3- Gemini Fear: Boredom

4- Cancer Fear: Aridity

5- Leo Fear: Averageness

6-Virgo Fear: Chaos

7-Libra Fear: Loneliness

8-Scorpio Fear: Powerlessness

9- Sagittarius Fear: Meaninglessness

10-Capricorn Fear: Uselessness

11-Aquarius Fear: Confinement

12- Pisces Fear: Enmeshment

The final test for Aries and for all souls mad enough to be mortal and sane enough to disappear? Allowing our more and more palpably sensed unborn nature to infiltrate the fully-downloaded personality style and karma symbolized by our birth chart. To let our 3-D somebody-ness be lit from within. And how, you might ask, does this Bodhisatva-like re-inhabiting of personality for the sake of inspiring storyless presence in others actually look? The variations are infinite, but they all dance to the same full-circle, Aries-meets-Pisces beat: “in-your-face emptiness.”

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IF ONENESS or “divine presence” is ever to become more than a flickering insight, we will need to find a way of converting the everyday ego-field into a Buddha field. That means consciously confronting our archetypal biases and [...]]]>
Learn to recognize and work with the archetypes, even if you never look at an astrology chart.

IF ONENESS or “divine presence” is ever to become more than a flickering insight, we will need to find a way of converting the everyday ego-field into a Buddha field. That means consciously confronting our archetypal biases and learning–through self-inquiry, meditation and compassion practice–to have a steadier experience of divine intent.

This psycho-spiritual training is designed not only to guide you into this personality-penetrating world view, but also trains you to facilitate this clear seeing in others. In this program, you will use your daily life as the laboratory for understanding how the archetypes manifest in the world. The material is presented through email and weekly, individual mentoring calls.

In this training, you will:

–Improve your relationship to yourself and others by becoming astrologically literate.

–Ground spiritual insights through Astrodharmic methods so that you can start living them instead of just thinking them.

–Become skilled and effective at using astrology without the time-consuming, technical learning curve usually necessary to become a full-time, professional astrologer.

–Learn to consciously work with your archetypal challenges and gifts – and to facilitate this for others — by using practical meditative techniques and perceptual tasks tailored to specific archetypes.

–Increase your professional effectiveness by learning a powerful, intuitive method for bringing astrological insight into the work you are already doing. And for those looking to change careers, did you know that astrology as a profession has been shown over the years to be recession-proof?

This year-long distance learning program begins with the 3-month Styles of Awakening intensive, an experiential training which by itself will equip you to recognize and work with the archetypes, whether or not you ever look at an astrology chart. You can stop after that, or continue on for the following nine months to become an Astrodharma Practitioner.

While everyone is welcome to take the 3-month course, you must apply for the year-long training, which will be co-taught by my partner, Jane Brunette, a trained Tibetan Buddhist meditation teacher with an advanced degree in counseling psychology. You can learn more about her at her website.

Limited space!
Because of the amount of personal attention given to each participant, I am taking only a limited number of students for this pilot program, so sign up now to reserve your place. Training begins on January 9, 2012.

SPECIAL DISCOUNT if you sign-up before December 1st.

Details on the 3-month program >

and they all move from conflict to climax to fleeting integration. [...]]]> “There is only one problem, ever: your uninvestigated story in the moment.”
–Byron Katie

AS FICTION WRITERS KNOW, in Western literature there are only four possible stories:
     1. human vs. human
     2. human vs. nature
     3. human vs. self
     4. human vs. God

and they all move from conflict to climax to fleeting integration. In short, all stories are war stories.

But what about “human awakens as compassionate witness to the four stories?” Doesn’t this fifth story offer a kind of redemptive twist on our otherwise depressingly formulaic and adversarial mental habits? Not quite. The fifth story is a spontaneous, moment-to-moment realization that cannot be scripted, reproduced or understood at the level of mind. Sure, spiritual storytellers can (and must) point to storyless presence, but until the hearer of the story in effect, “disappears” (steps out of the time-bound sense of self), this so-called “spiritual” story is nothing but a souped-up reformulation of the third and fourth stories listed above. Thus, the so-called “fifth story” exists only by inference and does not transpire in time.

Okay, but what do these fiction formulas have to do with Astrodharma? Plenty.

The Breath of Life
Each of the 12 signs and the unique archetypal soup they form when stirred together into our birth chart are story templates for our 3-D novels: a baked-in-the-cake matrix of me-stories that yank us around like puppets until we meditatively reclaim our true status as their author, editor and publisher.  But careful now - these Aquarius, Pisces and Virgo story templates are not the problem. After all, no archetypal predispositions, no personality. No story, no world.  
 
Incarnation, it seems, is asking us at every moment to quickly and courageously reverse engineer our well-honed, miserably secure me-stories back into the pure awareness that gave birth to them, then turn around and re-release them in their silence-ventilated form back into the world. This Bodhisattva-like movement from story, to storyless presence, to compassionately transfigured story, is the breath of life, the delirious subplot of our fantastically ordinary lives and the essence of what it means to be “spiritual.”

If this sounds like I’m suggesting you suck all the passion and spontaneity out of your life, I understand. There’s no shortage of good, kind folks confusing tepid disembodiment with an ego-witnessed life. Alas, there’s no brownie points for being afraid of the fire and earth elements in your chart! The trick is to illuminate the personality you’ve got. As Tibetan Buddhists know: Wrathful deities have no enemies.

Who wants to read a novel, watch a movie or observe the unwinding film reel of their life with such dispassion that they never suspend their disbelief? A truly “good read” or “good life” engages us without taking us over, stirs our passion without killing self-reflection. Buddhists call this simultaneous inhabiting of the instinctual and transpersonal realms “the middle path.” Cool-eyed discrimination dances with radiance and heat. Raucous play is infused with a tenderness born of ego-burning hours spent alone watching the mind. Alas, there’s so much support and agreement out there to swing between devil-may-care passion or nihilistic disengagement — so much concept-worship passed off as spirituality. The quest for sober intoxication? Get real: it’s a head trip. Better to distract from at least some of your angst by climbing into  samsara’s pulp-fiction roller coaster.

Buddhism has a name for what happens when we get addicted to cheap, me-story entertainment: “Attachment, Aversion and Indifference.” Since our best chance at evolving into “homo-luminous” depends on how quickly we’re able to spot and transform these three poisons in ourselves before they reap too much karmic damage, I offer you a further refinement: a listing of how the three poisons flow through the 12 archetypes. For the sake of all beings enslaved by mind’s endless dualistic seesawing, may we generate a hot, courageous fire to return to the middle path and not add to the weight of the world’s suffering by failing to pause, ventilate and transfigure.

Go to part 2: 12 styles of wanting, not wanting, and couldn’t-care-less >

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1. AUTOMATED ARIES

Attachment: Sovereignty The automated Aries part of us is addicted to perceiving, evoking and overcoming resistance as a means of propping up an unnaturally sovereign, hard-edged sense of identity.     Aversion: Impotence Automated Aries [...]]]> SCROLL DOWN TO YOUR SUN, MOON AND RISING SIGNS. After you read each section, I invite you to recite the Prayer for Liberation that follows.

1. AUTOMATED ARIES

Attachment: Sovereignty
The automated Aries part of us is addicted to perceiving, evoking and overcoming resistance as a means of propping up an unnaturally sovereign, hard-edged sense of identity.
   
Aversion: Impotence
Automated Aries is repelled its own and others’ impotence, dependency and the personality-dissolving awareness of the one, undivided self.

Indifference: Self-Conscious Humility
Automated Aries substitutes genuine equanimity with attitude-tinged claims of no preference that are subtly dismissive and outgassing one-upmanship.

Prayer for Liberation:
This attachment to sovereignty, aversion to impotence and propensity for self-conscious humility: these qualities are not mine; they are impersonal archetypes that flow — in different proportions, at different times — through everyone.

For the sake of all beings enslaved by these stressful me-stories, I vow to return to pure awareness, ventilating all me-stories with compassion, wisdom and luminosity.

2. AUTOMATED TAURUS   

Attachment: Material Security
The automated Taurus part of us works day and night to harden our naturally fluid, emergent sense of self by hardening our material and relational “assets” against insecurity-arousing transformation and change.

Aversion: Asset Loss
Automated Taurus butts hard against anyone or anything that threatens to graze on their identity-rich pasture by delivering — in a litigiously menacing, matter-of-fact way — the soft, animal advantages of climbing back through the fence.

Indifference: Narrow-minded Conservatism
When physical security and comfort stop satisfying and the fear of ruin seems as bad or worse than the actual fact, Automated Taurus descends into a faux nonattachment: a soul-numbing obedience to tradition and the status quo, no matter how deadening or unfulfilling.

Prayer for Liberation:
This attachment to material security, aversion to asset loss, and propensity to narrow-minded conservatism: these qualities are not mine; they are impersonal archetypes that flow — in different proportions, at different times — through everyone.

For the sake of all beings enslaved by these stressful me-stories, I vow to return to pure awareness, ventilating all me-stories with compassion, wisdom and luminosity.

3. AUTOMATED GEMINI

Attachment: Options
The automated Gemini part of us is addicted to the springtime phase of relationships, projects and ideas — the cresting, brainstormingly perfect moments untainted by those claustrophobic, house-bound concerns: the principles and disciplines required for follow-through.

Aversion: Routine
Immune to the subtle freshness blooming everywhere, Automated Gemini’s mind restlessly flees whoever, wherever and whatever appears stultifying, repetitive and depressingly reminiscent of his/her own merry-go-round mind.

Indifference: Mind-spray
Automated Gemini fakes restful enjoyment of what is through subtle forms of squirminess, coating each excruciatingly ordinary moment with mind-spray: spiritual interpretations that keep the mirror of silence safely clouded.

Prayer for Liberation:
This  attachment to options, aversion to routine and propensity for mind-spray: these qualities are not mine; they are impersonal archetypes that flow — in different proportions, at different times — through everyone.

For the sake of all beings enslaved by these stressful me-stories, I vow to return to pure awareness, ventilating all me-stories with compassion, wisdom and luminosity.

4. AUTOMATED CANCER

Attachment: Clan
Incestuously loyal, automated Cancer pledges allegiance to a fretfully caring,  emotionally battle-scarred self-story while going AWOL to the greater Being outside its coldly drawn perimeters.

Aversion: Orphanedness
Desperate for a sense of belonging, Automated Cancer oozes an irresistibly seductive empathy, prematurely locking in a friendship, partner or family, then plunging into long spells of hard-shelled mourning when their tender caring is unappreciated and misplaced.

Indifference: Melancholia
Blanketing over the preciousness of the One Being and calling it “the vast, impersonal public,” Automated Cancer retreats into an inconsolably private, institutionalized melancholy born of losing its familial niche in the dream of separation. 

Prayer for Liberation:
This attachment to clan, aversion to orphanedness and propensity to melancholia: these qualities are not mine; they are impersonal archetypes that flow — in different proportions, at different times – through everyone.

For the sake of all beings enslaved by these stressful me-stories, I vow to return to pure awareness, ventilating all me-stories with compassion, wisdom and luminosity.

5. AUTOMATED LEO   

Attachment: Charisma
The automated Leo part of us overcompensates for (rather than meditatively meets) our insecurities by generating a theatrically convincing self-confidence that, much to our heart’s dismay, successfully inducts others into states of reactive enlivenment and ennobled display.

Aversion: Invisibility
Feeling unseen and unappreciated, Automated Leo experiences a nightmarish loss of identity, grabbing hard at a perversely effective kind of affirmation: the shame-arousing histrionics of one who has been famously betrayed.

Indifference: Haughtiness
When outward affirmation no longer inflates and theatrics no longer seduce, the Automated Leo part of us fancies itself “humble” by proudly strutting its indifference for the audience.

Prayer for Liberation:
This  attachment to charisma, aversion to invisibility and propensity for haughtiness: these qualities are not mine; they are impersonal archetypes that flow — in different proportions, at different times – through everyone.

For the sake of all beings enslaved by these stressful me-stories, I vow to return to pure awareness, ventilating all me-stories with compassion, wisdom and luminosity.

6. AUTOMATED VIRGO

Attachment: Protocol
Confronted by the unimprovable mystery of what is, the Automated Virgo identity is virtually unemployed, setting off a busy, well-behaved anxiety that turns our talent for efficiency and gentle admonishments to “go green” into grey, presence-killing distraction.

Aversion: Chaos
No amount of fixing and ordering will assuage Automated Virgo’s distrust in the benevolent, microbial madness that both sickens and makes digestible this feast of evolving incarnations.

Indifference: Criticalness   
Disillusioned by the reinventing wheel of consciousness and the incurable herpes outbreaks of everyday life, our Automated Virgo me-story feigns transcendence, sublimating its fault-finding habit into an intimidating, clinical eye.

Prayer for Liberation:
This attachment to protocol, aversion to chaos and propensity for criticalness: these qualities are not mine; they are impersonal archetypes that flow — in different proportions, at different times – through everyone.

For the sake of all beings enslaved by these stressful me-stories, I vow to return to pure awareness, ventilating all me-stories with compassion, wisdom and luminosity.

7. AUTOMATED LIBRA

Attachment: Harmony  
Repelled by the brutish, ego-outing mirror of authentic relationship, the Automated Libra part of us elegantly obfuscates, preferring cultured collusion to becoming true allies in awakening.

Aversion: Inelegance
Can the settling of differences always be civilized? Automated Libra insists on it. Does this style of individuating create honest contact and truly clear the air? No; this part of our mind considers a beauty-compromised world more tragic than a truth-compromised one.

Indifference: Tepidity
When conflict-avoidance creates more tension than tranquility, and peace-on-the-other-side-of-sparring is inconceivable, the Automated Libra ego collapses into a tender, disembodied malaise.

Prayer for Liberation:
This attachment to harmony, aversion to inelegance and propensity for tepidity: these qualities are not mine; they are impersonal archetypes that flow — in different proportions, at different times — through everyone.

For the sake of all beings enslaved by these stressful me-stories, I vow to return to pure awareness, ventilating all me-stories with compassion, wisdom and luminosity.

8. AUTOMATED SCORPIO

Attachment: Darkness
Automated Scorpio prides itself on its ability to stare calmly at the face of dark truths other’s would find withering. This Vampiric, shadow-sucking me-story makes them feel solid, invulnerable to crisis and catastrophically alienated from the fangless majority.

Aversion: Superficiality
When you show up squeamish about realities Automated Scorpio has spent years numbing to, the lack of potential intimacy stings them and so, according to the brutal, Old Testament logic that shaped and toughened them, you deserve a sting in return.

Indifference: Intimidation
Stung by the irrepressible truth of their mortal sameness, Automated Scorpio egos are forced to continually resurrect, distinguish and protect themselves through desperate displays of  intrusive, laser-like perception.

Prayer for Liberation:
This attachment to darkness, aversion to superficiality and propensity for intimidation: these qualities are not mine; they are impersonal archetypes that flow — in different proportions, at different times — through everyone.

For the sake of all beings enslaved by these stressful me-stories, I vow to return to pure awareness, ventilating all me-stories with compassion, wisdom and luminosity.

9. AUTOMATED SAGITTARIUS

Attachment: Prospect
Verbs like “searching” require bounding, big-thighed nouns with high foreheads and lips that overflow with discursive expat philosophies. Automated Sagittarius weaves identity with itinerary, and the backyard of being is left untrod. 

Aversion: Provincialism
It takes a narrow-canyon’d mind to judge another canyon narrow. Out of principle, Automated Sagittarius tries hard not to do this, but since “knowing” is how this part of our ego defines its worth and edges, the temptation is irresistible.

Indifference: Preachiness
When priceless, life-changing truths are strained through buoyant self-absorption, no one listens. This is the painful plight of Automated Sagittarius. Why does this part of us keep talking? Because silence makes us instantly equal with all the illiterate, uneducated facets of the jewel of creation.

Prayer for Liberation:
This attachment to prospect, aversion to provincialism and propensity for preachiness: these qualities are not mine; they are impersonal archetypes that flow — in different proportions, at different times — through everyone.

For the sake of all beings enslaved by these stressful me-stories, I vow to return to pure awareness, ventilating all me-stories with compassion, wisdom and luminosity.

10. AUTOMATED CAPRICORN

Attachment: Status
Reputation and survival are linked at the hip. The Automated Capricorn part of us knows this. What it misses is that only personal warmth attracts steady clients and it can’t be faked. Strategic caring erodes our self-respect and surrounds us with folks who share the same affliction. Success? Broken-hearted competency.

Aversion: Vulnerability
There is nothing inherently respectful about discipline. So what: you made an agreement and kept it. Automated Capricorn confuses the seasoning (delivered goods or service) for the main course (communion).

Indifference: Opportunism
It took an extra hour but it was mostly due to our bad mood. Do we charge for it? The Automated Capricorn part of us doesn’t even ask the question. Why? Because no amount of compensation could alleviate the trauma of our spirit-numbing, survival-of-the-fittest worldview.

Prayer for Liberation:
This attachment to status, aversion of vulnerability and propensity for opportunism: these qualities are not mine; they are impersonal archetypes that flow — in different proportions, at different times – through everyone.

For the sake of all beings enslaved by these stressful me-stories, I vow to return to pure awareness, ventilating all me-stories with compassion, wisdom and luminosity.

11. AUTOMATED AQUARIUS

Attachment: Iconoclasm
On the back of genuine injustice, our Automated Aquarius ego rides piggyback and proud, railing against (but secretly praising) flawed authorities for distracting us from the futility of rearranging mind’s evidence of separation.

Aversion: Flawed Authority
There is a dysfunctional and indispensable aspect of resisting what is. When the motive is propping up a psychological piece of cardboard so ego can feel solid, separate and real, we go numb to the Tao of protest and inadvertently join forces with the flawed authority we despise.

Indifference: Disenfranchisement
When it is seen that freedom and oppression will never stop flip-flopping and even the enlightened ones gradually grow sleepy — grazing on propaganda like lobotomized sheep — our world-saving Aquarian ego delays death by taking up a more achievable cause: being different.

Prayer for liberation:
This attachment to iconoclasm, aversion to flawed authority and propensity for disenfranchisement: these qualities are not mine; they are impersonal archetypes that flow — in different proportions, at different times – through everyone.

For the sake of all beings enslaved by these stressful me-stories, I vow to return to pure awareness, ventilating all me-stories with compassion, wisdom and luminosity.

12. AUTOMATED PISCES

Attachment: Self-sacrifice
The Automated Pisces part of us makes an identity out of self-sacrifice,  preferring emotional and physical depletion (via chronic “helping” and idiot compassion) to the final wrecking-ball swing: watching me-towers collapse in their own footprint.

Aversion: Transcendence
Being sewn into the veil between the two worlds is not a typical thing to feel proud about. Ephemeral folks, one would think, are too busy getting by to get haughty. The Automated Pisces part of us would heartily agree, but would be lying. Being thin-skinned is, at its best, foreplay for revelation, but “going all the way” would mean losing something truly virginal: our alpha-sensitive me-story.

Indifference: Addiction
One thing’s for sure: we all need to find some way to dull our empathic overwhelm. When mystical sunglasses, seclusion, and self-extinguishing martyrdom stop delivering, Automated Pisces reaches past the hard stuff (Buddha, dharma, sangha) for some cheap sex, suicide or wine.

Prayer for liberation:
This attachment to self-sacrifice, aversion to transcendence and propensity to addiction: these qualities are not mine; they are impersonal archetypes that flow — in different proportions, at different times – through everyone.

For the sake of all beings enslaved by these stressful me-stories, I vow to return to pure awareness, ventilating all me-stories with compassion, wisdom and luminosity.

Ready for more?
-Schedule an astrology reading with Hunter
-Subscribe to Styles of Awakening Newsletter (monthly)
-Subscribe to posts by email

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Face [...]]]> DO YOU BELIEVE IN ASTROLOGY? Careful how you answer: It’s a trick question — the sound of a disorientation-phobic mind attempting to induct you into its tidy, dualistic paradigm. My answer? “About as much as I believe in Hunter.” Why must The Mystery be so mercilessly and mechanically nailed down? Because ego feels so desperately ephemeral.

Face it: there’s no such thing as an “outside” mind. There’s only “the” mind. The breeds of anxiety and anticipation that drift through our two-eared fish tanks are anything but exotic. Why do we spend so little time studying and making friends with this outrageously interpenetrating, archetype-enraptured psyche? Here are three possibilities. Take your pick:

1) Because it might reveal how unnatural and downright exhausting it is to uphold our groomed-over-a-lifetime “island of grey matter” status?

2) Because it might render all astro-masks theatrically precious but interchangeably unreal and, thereby, blur the line between the definitively likable and unlikable landmarks (a.k.a. “people”) we so sadly depend on to navigate our sad ship across this sad sea?

3) Because a swashbucklingly separate mind is preferable to a provisional, dream-savvy one?

Do you believe in astrology? Hope not. A conceptually believed-in or disbelieved-in (vs. directly experienced) Leo archetype is nothing short of a cult. Smearing our eyes with belief or disbelief in anything is no different than stumbling around under the influence of a world-dizzying hallucinogen.

From ego’s point of view, astrology is a bummer because it de-personalizes personality. Personality traits we used to call “ours” turn out to be on loan to billions. All the world’s sinister, boring and supremely emulatable body/minds get squeezed, like dishrags, into a humble puddle of being-ness. Our best crack at “special-ness?” Being uncommonly and heartbreakingly aware of the viciously gossiped about and devoutly ignored divine presence.

The Void’s Passing Mood
The most hateful thing about astrology is not that it dares to associate planetary positions with the colors of personality, but how it insults our self-made notions of who we are. If how we show up in the world is a function of the Void’s passing mood (as indicated by constellational mudras), we are either god-spawn spin-offs of a universe-sized psyche or we’re space junk with a flattering self-concept. Either way, we’re screwed. Option one means our hard-hearted, robotic habits will likely follow us from lifetime to lifetime, so we’d better get to work now. Option two means that the kindest gesture and most mystical union we’ve ever known is probably just the Apolcalypse in a good mood.

There. Now you know why the serious study of astrology is so intimidating — and why we will never stop skimming those Sun Sign columns we don’t believe in.

Ready for more?
-Schedule an astrology reading with Hunter
-Subscribe to Styles of Awakening Newsletter (monthly)
-Subscribe to posts by email

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