PSYCHIC BOOMERANGS AND THE RISE OF THE 10 MINUTE MONK
APRIL IS A BARRAGE of backwardation. It begins with the continuing Venus Retrograde (until the 15th) followed by Saturn retro on the 6th, and Mercury and Pluto going retro on the 20th. A key player in this orgy of introspection is Saturn, who forms a square with retrograde Venus all month. The planets, its seems, are trying to slow us down enough to lucidly feel, instead of blithely numb, the psychic sting that our micro aggressions and empathic failures exact, as they karmicly circle back to bite us. Here’s how it works:
Saturn lives in an “eye for an eye,” Old Testament universe. To the Saturn part of us, every socially acceptable slight and average, excusable cold shoulder carries with it an unconscious expectation of retaliation that fills us with subconscious fear. The longer we refuse to face and feel this accumulated fear of retaliation and dissolve it with healthy regret, prayer and (often secret) acts of amends, it swells into a swamp of psychic shame and numbness that diminishes our life force and clouds our soul-seeing presence.
Why do monks become monks? Perhaps because they were smitten with Saturn realism. Every slowed-down, savored human interaction, after all, reveals so many twitches of unprocessed self-betrayal and shame. Why cloud the humble self-reckoning process with the complexities of romantic role play?
I know. I know. You’re not a monk and you and yours had all these plans ready to go for April. What to do with all this pent up Aries fire? My advice: use it to stoke an even bigger blaze in May.
Rise of the 10 Minute Monk
Of course, life can’t crawl to a halt with every Mercury and Venus retrograde. So, if you want or need to imbibe in the standard scenery-chewing catharsis, Saturn says he’s willing to bargain. You get to be the giddy do-er so long as you first don the robes of the 10 minute monk. Sit down (or, gulp, Skype) with a partner once per day for two timed, 10 minute meditations. At the end of each abbreviated glimpse of mind’s random spaceyness and jerky returns to lucid witnessing, please take turns vulnerably reporting to each other whatever weather just sailed through the sky of consciousness. There. Now you’re humiliated back into the ground of being enough to slice through at least some of the Murky Retro confusion with a modicum of tender seeing and the upgrading of your relationships can proceed with Tao-flowing grace.
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