Could Astrology Save the World? 

YES, I KNOW.  The question sounds naive. At best. But bear with me. Modern, meditative astrology is not a parlor game; it’s a paradigm.

Seen through the eyes of the average, orphaned ego, the head is a graveyard: every cynical (or soulful) thought about itself continually passing away; every moment tainted by the subliminal stench of identity-death. How can any hairy headquarters of identity stabilize a sense of well-being until it feels itself floating, pickle-like, in a timeless brine? Until we feel safe at home in the heart of god, are we not compelled by pure Darwinian survival impulse to wrap our pristine awareness in a quilt of conceptual nostalgia? Who am I? Easy: An unraveling fabric of archetypally inherited personality traits and culturally conditioned roles, covered over with identity-grasping posturing. The source of modern anxiety? Mystery-killing shame.

The eternity-parched mind is constantly, and rightfully, on red alert and the more we attempt to quell its anxiety with charming role play, positive thinking or mystical gossip, the louder it wails. This makes suicide and ecocide more and more irresistible. Why? Because they provide symmetry to our inner and outer experience: the graveyard within matches the graveyard without. Think about it: annihilation is the closest thing to oneness duality can offer.

How can the time-bound sense of self fail to resent a world who continually whispers “I will devour you; I will outlive you.” No use appealing to a drowning man’s humanitarian compassion. He will pull down anything he can get his flailing hands on.

Enter that muscle-bound lifeguard, astrology.

Astrology drapes personality and planet with symbolic pointers that, when felt into and meditated upon, confirm the nondual teachings of the great mystic traditions, prodding our proudly orphaned egos to bow down to, and become reabsorbed in, the seamless field of sentience that all minds and personalities rise and fall in.
 
Yes, astrology, at its core, is a devotional practice.

What particular, here/now flavor of Leo is standing in front of you? Impossible to know, as a person. Only meditative relating can partake of that. Why? Because Leo is a fleeting verb – a dynamic, divinely-ordained style of awakening, continually stirring together with other styles. Who can possibly stay current with this swirling archetypal mist? No one. Except perhaps, a silence-savoring heart steeped in felt archetype and a posture of inner prostration.

Suddenly, the quilt flies up, revealing something radiantly innocent, timeless, and unborn: a desperately unsavored presence eclipsed by a me-story that is locked in a particular style of squirming away from the only home it will ever know. Remembering that all parts of our waking dream are aspects of our self, how could we not feel a stab of heartbreak for our own automated archetypal strut? Will a time come to share our helpful astro insights? No. Will “already-ness” be guided to talk about “becoming-ness” through us? None of our business.

This is what astrology wants to be.

Could a groundswell of archetypal self-inquiry and meditative relating be our best bet at saving the planet? Oh yes. Providing both saver and saved are perceived as mind-killing, tongue-in-cheek role play arising in the divine mind. The last thing the world needs is more astro-egos and green entrepreneurs on a countdown, secretly cynical about the personality-littered planet they think they’re so eager to save.

The false do-er

Your words should be alive enough to kill you, to free you from the torment of psychological identity. ~Mooji

The deeper we get into astrology, the more we come face-to-face with a world ravaged by what therapists call “archetypal possession.” Everywhere we turn, the humiliating, hot-under-the-mask role play of the archetypes assaults us. It isn’t long before life pushes us to make a stand. Either we party hardy into this drunk Halloween, or we take refuge in the Buddhist view: Every one of us, at every moment, is at a momentous existential crossroads. Either we allow ego (the archetypal me-stories of the mind) to run as automated attributes of our personal identity, or we rest as pure awareness, allowing the lampshade of personality to glow with timeless presence – free of identification, artifice or strategy.

Why has astrology been so systematically trivialized – if not demonized – by most modern societies and religions? Why does it refuse to die? Because it provides people with an empowering subtle energy language with which to identify habits of mind that would otherwise operate compulsively, under the radar. Because this deepening into our witnessing center threatens the identity-through-consumption mentality that archetype-savvy advertisers and corporate CEO’s depend on. Because identification with, and allegiance to, large collective institutions (governments and churches) become shallow substitutes for the fullness of being that dawns as we learn to rest as the merciful witness of our own and others astrologically inherited conditioning. Because true, meditatively embodied astrology turns people into heartbroken mystics who value spacious self-inquiry over breathless repartee, self-reckoning presence over the tearless malaise that passes for sanity and success.

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