The Astrodharma Podcast #3: Caravan to Midnight

By Hunter Reynolds, on May 29th, 2022

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Caravan to Midnight

In this podcast I explore five ways to embody rock solid faith in the midst of relentless change and breakdown, see all beings as superheroes and dismiss conspiracy theories as kid stuff compared to the shocking truth of who we are. Next, I describe how astrology pushes us to “die before we die,” celebrate Gemini’s unique approach to meditation, offer a Gemini prayer, nail down the best time to travel in June and describe how vital it is to make peace with the mortality-mirroring nature of love. Finally, I send a shout-out to Saturn retrograde for helping us discriminate between survival and soul-calling as we live out our days “nine meals from anarchy and one breath from grace.” To close the podcast, you are warmly invited to join me for five minutes of devotional chanting.

Introduction

Greetings fellow dream animals! Welcome. This podcast is a place where silence grows a tongue, words turn into dharma bells and astrology is understood as a mystical practice more suited to poetry than psychology.

To make the podcast more meditative and digestible, there will be three dharma bell breaks followed by thirty seconds of silence. At the end of the podcast, you’re warmly invited to join me for a few minutes of devotional chanting. Enjoy!

Does the world look increasingly dark and dystopian? Remember this: No matter what happens, the essential incarnational challenge remains the same:

In the face of relentless change and breakdown, how will we embody the rock solid faith of the soul?

Perhaps these five dharmic pointers will help. After listening to each one, I invite you to recite with me the following mantra:

“Caravan to midnight, I am yours.”

1) The inner game remains the same

It has always been so. Defective egos vote for defective policies to be carried out by defective politicians. So what? The inner game (learning to love wisely) remains the same.

Mantra: “Caravan to midnight, I am Yours.”

2) There are no humans- just Cage Fighters

You and that smirky Big Pharma rep have something in common: you’re both souls trapped in a hairdo’d cage with a dangerous, tattoo’d brute (believed-in thought) and only one of you is coming out alive.

Mantra: “Caravan to midnight, I am Yours.”

3) We’re surrounded by superheroes

It took superhuman guts to kick through the spirit/matter veil and crown our Aries head into another round of this rough-and-tumble dream-sport. Incarnation is a martial arts move and the world is awash with gladiators and superheroes: benevolent fictional characters primed for an epic showdown with Darth Ego.

Mantra: “Caravan to midnight, I am Yours.”

4) There is only one enemy: moronic mantras

We’re all aching to be set free from our miserably secure me-story and meet the world with Beginner’s Mind. Why? Because, only then can the arrogant dictating come to an end: “Earth is a rogue rock and I’m a fleshy fragment.” Only then can we stop reciting our moronic mantra: “Creature down here, God up there.”

Mantra: “Caravan to midnight, I am Yours.”

5) Conspiracy theories are kid stuff

The most demonic NWO conspiracy is kid stuff compared to the shocking truth of who we are: “vaster than sky, greater than space.” Even now, the starry blackness is calling us by name: Beloved dream animal, it’s time; time to savor the psyche of cosmic dimensions glowing in every eye and become so absorbed in the ageless innocence that old age, disease and death have no power to interrupt your celebration of the eternally spiraling journey of the soul.

Mantra: “Caravan to Midnight, I am Yours.”

This Much We Know For Sure

This much we know for sure: The Aries-to-Pisces wheel of the zodiac is embedded into our flesh. Our hairy headquarters of identity is, even now, being reabsorbed into the Piscean ground of Being. The Aries head is collapsing into its Pisces footprint.

The only question is, Will we soulfully, sublimely release ourselves into this collapse, (and, in effect, “die before we die”) so we can resurrect, over and over, as deathlesss Being and thereby infiltrate the nightmare of orphaned ego?

Or will we resist the inevitable, postponing meditative reabsorption via identity-grasping role play until death– symbolically gutted and rendered pointless– claims us as its helpless victim?

Why do astrological archetypes go on autopilot, driving minds to speak and act compulsively, with little-to-no witnessing presence? Because, if ego didn’t whip itself into a trance of doer-ship, loudly proclaiming its “separate somebody status,” its fragile dream of solidity would quickly pixelate and dissolve into what mind calls “void” and soul calls, “the seamless field of sentience.”

Let us end this first segment of the podcast with a prayer attuned to the current mood of the sky, called Gemini.

Gemini Prayer: Heavenly Wanderer

Heavenly wanderer, drunk on the play of diurnal clay, rip off this crown of thinky thorns, this suffering from the “sin of lonely” in the garden of Your one and only. Actor in all 3-D screenings, chuckling at our sober seekings, increase the case count of Your holy fever! Squeeze hard the anus of I AM, until tingles climb the spine of something vast, sublime. Attune us to Your Shepherding Presence, this flickering candle guiding us through the catacombs of comprehension, as we follow You, like hooded monks, chanting our orphaned malaise into tears of thanks and praise.

Tibetan Bell followed by 30 seconds of silence

Astrodharma Transit Report: June, 2022

The beginning weeks of June suffer from post Mercury retrograde fatigue. There’s a push to action, but immediately after Mercury goes direct on June 3rd, Saturn squares it. Travel is still a bit glitchy and the time for unobstructed forward movement doesn’t fully arrive until Mercury moves out of Taurus into Gemini on the 13th.

From this point onward, things move forward with lightning quickness. Ready to hop on a plane? I recommend boarding your flight between the 13th and the 15th, which is the energetic peak of the month as the Moon is Full in adventure-loving Sagittarius on the June 15th.

Travel in June is outwardly light, inwardly sober. Why? Three reasons:

1) Because Saturn went retrograde the day after Mercury went direct, pushing us to do some serious reevaluating in the house(s) that Aquarius rules until Saturn turns direct again on October.

2) Because Venus in Taurus is square Saturn all month (exact on 19th). Relationships unsupportive of our larger life purpose either upgrade, or implode.

3) Because we sense the gravity of what’s coming. In our subconscious, we know that by the time we get into September/October when retro Saturn moves within one degree away of an exact square to world-rocking Uranus, we need to get situated again on the land and with the people we’re happy to stay put with for a while.

Saturn Retrograde: May 4th- October 23rd.
Survival or Soul Calling?

Saturn goes retrograde every 12 months for about 4½ months. In the sign of Aquarius, it’s a good time to consolidate the base of our life and let projects and undertakings mature quietly in the background, like a good wine.

Move forward with team projects slowly but surely, pausing to go back to the drawing board to work out unresolved issues.

Saturn Retrograde is a great time to think “big picture” and decide where and with whom we want to invest.

Impatient with financial and professional setbacks? Saturn retro may be doing you a favor by frustrating you out of a job that is motivated more by survival than soul-calling. Those on a genuine soul path will work humbly and patiently, sticking to the straight and narrow.

The June 21st Solstice: Making Peace with mortality-mirroring love

The period between the the Solstice on the 21st and the New Moon in Cancer on the 28th is a good time to inquire into why “restless doer-ship” haunts us even when we’re on vacation.

Perhaps, through the tribe-loving lens of Cancer, we will see the secret agenda of busyness: to smear Vaseline on the lens between us and the ravages of old age, sickness and death. Easier to watch skin falling off the bones of beloveds in blurry fits and starts (when we carve out a small patch of time to see them) than to suffer the graphic, blow-by-blow footage of aging day after day with a beloved.

Could this be the reason why so many are addicted, through dating apps, to the springtime phase of relationship?

The transits of June keep prodding us: What are you doing with this period of relative ease and peacetime? Are you weaving Gemini adventure with Saturnian strategy? Where will you be during the Saturn/Uranus square in September/October? Alone and unsupported? Or will you be deep in meditative practice: glowing your ageless innocence in front of a mortality-mirroring love?

(Tibetan Bell followed by 30 seconds of silence)

Ego imagines itself perversely special for living through the last couple years. In truth, not much has changed.

Mind-on-a-countdown continues to distract from the feelings of existential angst designed to push ego into meditation, even as Deathless Being calmly sways to the beat of disaster.

The question is…

Will we use periods of relative ease, like June, to seek out soul-mirrors shiny enough to listen us into Being- so we can offer this same soul-seeing support to others, when periods of stress return?

Will we be Dervish enough to be spinned, or will we stiffen into the scenery-devouring antics of the adventure junkie: the essence of lower octave Gemini?

Out of the fear storm, into the Friend

Are these times more fearsome than others? Perhaps. But, let’s be honest: ego-on-a-countdown was born into a fearstorm and ego-on-a-countdown will die in a fearstorm. Not so, Timeless Presence.

McVirus, aside, our predicament remains the same: the hairdo’s and happenings continue to bob and dance all around us as mind seeks happiness by manipulating the contents of awareness, while soul sips sweetness from awareness, itself.

Holy smoke or storied bloke?

Will we abide as the radiant center of this planetary merry-go-round? Or will we ride dizzy at its circumference? The stakes are more than just personal. Our worldview populates the planet with a specific kind of human. Whoever we think we are, we will find proof to make this same label stick to others. In this way, we are, truly, co-creators with the Divine.

Astrology sees personality as drifting archetypal smoke: divinely flavored incense with unique inductive powers that sacralize the space we show up in and accentuate the temple-like nature of earth.

The soul-seeing world of astrology is always whispering,

This smoke was designed to blow away; the mystery is kind, come and play.

Mr. Mind, on the other hand, sees personality as a dense knot of me-stories– some likable, some not. Strong opinions about the imaginary “others” makes ego’s “passing cloud” feel solid, stable, real: immune, for a moment, from the microbial manslaughter happening just under our heels.

So which will it be: Holy smoke or storied bloke?

The question is both playful and deadly serious.

“Playful,” because naked seeing is fully vaxxed against this dream of separation. Our deepest essence remains untouched.

“Deadly serious,” because ego’s fear of being reabsorbed into the Merciful Witness drives us into compulsive, identity-hardening role play. We “ghost” our soul, seduce others to do the same and live haunted by a nameless shame.

The purpose of Astrology? To help us quit falling for the “trait bait” and strengthen our soul-seeing skills. To replace the smelly play of personality with divinely ordained “styles of awakening” and, in this way, transition us out of the fear storm, into The Friend.

Tibetan Bell followed by 30 seconds of silence

Gemini Meditation: “Sky Diving on the first date”

According to the creation story embedded into our flesh, Aries instigated the incarnation process by providing us with a hairy headquarters of identity. Out of this essential seed of ego and personhood, sprang the Taurus taproot (the neck) which serves as a downward plunging feeding tube into the body, the five senses and through them into the manifest workings of the world. Extending horizontally from this Taurus Taproot springs a complex network of rootlets (symbolized by the Gemini arms, hands, lungs and tongue) which curiously probe, explore and suck-in social and intellectual nourishment from the world.

This networking impulse provides a clue about how Gemini most naturally meditates: in spontaneous, interactive episodes. I once had a Gemini Sun friend who would, while walking down a city street, suddenly stop and sit down in the most unlikely places to fully take in the scene. He was a writer and he had a knack for knowing when and where to mine for fresh material.

How does Gemini meditate? Rarely alone and in a different place every day. On a jet or while hurtling through space on a bicycle. In the throes of writing or playing guitar. In the middle of a conversation in a cafe. In the depths of an open-eyed, meditative gaze, where Gem can take-in the intoxicating vastness of a face and go “skydiving on the first date.”

Note for Fridge: Channel Surfing

The only healthy reason to contemplate a challenging astrology transit in the future is to use the less challenging time that precedes it to physically and psychologically prepare. This way, we can navigate the incoming turbulence more gracefully. Yes, astrology is all about living with more grace.

In light of this, we close this month’s podcast with an impish Gemini jab.

“You’ve been channel surfing between trite and tragic your whole life. Less desperate times would solve nothing.”

I encourage you to print and post this phrase somewhere where you will see it every day so it will be firmly installed before September/October.

Okay, that brings us to the end of the June 2022 podcast. Thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy the effervescent, interactive air of Gem-in-the-eye! A sublime time to be “married to amazement” as Mary Oliver says, as we live out or days nine meals from anarchy and one breath from grace.

Said more succinctly: All’s well that’s Orwell.

If you enjoyed this podcast, please spread the word, subscribe and check out my specials on Patreon. You can learn more about me, my readings and my online mentorships at astrodharma.org and you can follow me on Instagram at theastrodharmapodcast.