WELCOME to the Astrodharma Podcast. My name is Hunter Reynolds and I invite you to join me as we sip the tea of self-inquiry, sit proud in our infinity and bask in the soul-seeing light of modern, meditative astrology.
This episode contains three dharma bell breaks and ends with three minutes of devotional chanting.
If you’d like to learn more about my online readings and mentorships, please visit my website: astrodharma.org.
There’s a trend unfolding. Have you noticed? The “God as energy” folks are flirting, once again, with a personal god.
Perhaps it was the vax that forced the issue.
I mean, if feeling “alone in our head” is normal, why not let Big Pharma fiddle with our DNA? Maybe they can finally deactivate that pesky God gene.
This is Saturn in Pisces (March 7, 2023- Feb 13, 2026) kicking the tires of our faith, prodding us with questions like,
What good is a psyche of cosmic dimensions, without a reachable address?
Witness the “declaration of faith” recently posted on Youtube by popular liberal comedian, JP Sears (now selling T-shirts that read, “Got God?”) or the viral rap song, End of the World, by Tom Macdonald as he shares the mic with Christian country singer, John Rich.
This is old school Saturn delivering a sober slap in the face to cosmic Pisces whose God is so everywhere, it’s nowhere.
Why are we so limply succumbing to being tracked and surveilled? Perhaps because we were designed to surrender to “Someone” who cares enough about us to watch!
Saturn in Pisces presents us with a koan:
How does a strict, lawful and time-tethered planet like Saturn dance gracefully with the soul-seeing presence of Pisces?
The answer comes as we study how father and mother, dry and wet, dance together in our body.
Saturn (ruler of Capricorn) rules our skeletal structure: the dry, unbending frame upon which our wet- and otherwise pinched and tangled- organs hang.
Bones represent structure, discipline and authority: the unsentimental guidance of the father archetype. Skeletal Saturn is strict: from Latin stringere, “to tighten, draw tight”.
The countless watery sacs and connecting tubes that pump together to bring life to our organism, on the other hand, point to Cancer, the empathic, yielding mother archetype.
Clearly, the pliable and plastic is inoperable without the stiff and unyielding.
Saturn in Pisces asks us to apply the same principal to our spiritual life by noticing how the otherworldly sensitivity of Pisces folds in on itself without daily practice, accountability and a grounded way serving within the Saturn matrix.
Imagine a heart that doesn’t believe in rib cages.
This is lower octave Pisces becoming delusional and self-absorbed, captive to a faith divorced from consensus reality and ungrounded in a skeletal framework of principles, rules (and, yes, a Ruler) to shape its meandering, moods and opinions.
It takes a stiff shot of Saturnian realism to admit the psychotic, Jeckle/Hyde nature of our inner life; to catch ourselves sympathizing with what the priest says at our friend’s funeral even as another part of us dismisses it as soothing conjecture.
Most take this unresolved tension to their deathbeds. It takes uncompromising bony introspection to recognize the unresolved contradictions in our faith.
Dharma Bell Break #1
Let’s take a closer look at that word, “psychosis:”
An acute or chronic mental state marked by loss of contact with reality, disorganized speech and behavior, and often by hallucinations or delusions, seen in certain mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, and other medical disorders.
Here, we are talking about spiritual psychosis: the way modern, civilized minds fracture into disintegrated parts when they meditate and pray.
One thing’s for sure: Meditation is pathetic narcissism if it fails to turn us into wise lovers in time and space.
Similarly: Prayer is psychotic without a personal God.
Sure, we can recite prayers for their autosuggestion benefit, but speaking in a syntax that comforts us by implying there is Someone listening when, in fact, we have little to no cultivated contact with this divine Being, leaves- not just a fraudulent aftertaste- but an inner schism.
What happens to an ego if, over time, it fails to resolve this tension between life as a “free-roaming entity” (unseen-by, unloved-by and unaccountable-to any ultimate authority) and life as a “child of a God” whose Saturnian purpose and fulfillment is to seek Piscean guidance and consolation from a God who cares?
Is this not a socially acceptable form of psychosis?
Notice how flaccid and mundane everyday speech becomes when souls continually swerve away from God-talk. The structure of conversation- like the structure of our lives- lacks any end game or final, satisfying punctuation mark. Comments meander like spineless Pisces seaweed, filling up the space between us with every kind of concept except the ones that could deeply bond and satisfy: words of humility and devotion to the Greater Being that is, even now, reabsorbing us.
Why has prayer and talk of a personal god become so taboo?
Because prayer exposes our fraud. It points a microsope at the exact, icky place where a lofty spiritual concept has yet to give rise to glimpses of communion. It stings even as it soothes.
Is the journey of prayer precious or pointless? ego asks. Fortunately, it can’t decide. As the tension between fraudulence and sublimity keeps building, mind is forced to choose: exit the prayer altogether or allow the tension to tip us over the edge: from conceptual chatter into luminous homecoming.
To give thanks to the Creator out loud, in front of others, is to invite them into their own crucible of soothing and stinging. Now hold on, says the collective psyche. A minute ago, the group was in a groove, feeling secure in their agreed upon role play and idea of who they were. Now the desperation of “orphaned ego on a countdown” is erupting into the space, sending everyone into alternating bouts of anxiety and relief.
A room full of smooth flowing charm and sophistication has been invaded by a field of collective homesickness.
Once again, the tension builds. Only, this time, the tension is projected. Will the group focus on the prideful aspect of the prayer leader or will they visit the soul-humming place they are pointing to?
Dharma Bell Break #2
Me-Story, Muteness and Mediumship
On the spiritual path, the ego’s talking style evolves and matures through repeating cycles of me-story, muteness and mediumship.
First, we exit crude gossip: words that solidify the dream of personhood and harden our sense of being an orphaned ego.
A period disorientation and muteness ensues.
Next, we learn to notice, on-the-spot, opinions and attitudes that are tinged with pride and positionality. Judgement is accurately and acutely understood as “projected self-hatred.”
A deeper, more humbling period of muteness ensues.
Next, we engage in a kind of extroverted journaling. Directly or indirectly, we invite others to join us as we map of the inner movements of mind. Developmentally helpful at first, this exchange of personal and psychological truths begins to feel more and more claustrophobic: an intelligent form of self-absorption.
Time for another meditative reset.
At this point, we may turn to a more ego-cornering practice of meditation and self-inquiry, employing Advaitic questions like, “Who am I? and “As what am I speaking?” Not to be answered, these kind of questions shift our paradigm and return us to beginner’s mind: the fountain of soul-seeing presence.
Words become more weighty and karmically consequential. We learn to recognize, on-the-spot, what kind of egoic posturing has captivated our tongue and pivot quickly into a more meditative lens. Our attention becomes still enough to notice, with a heavy heart, how the presence-killing attitudes, beliefs and preconceptions of orphaned ego spread like STD’s, transmitting to others lifelong cycles of ego-inflamation that we- and we, alone- are responsible for spreading.
This, of course, is devastating, triggering the most profound, repentance-drenched muteness of all.
Perhaps we now go into periods of silent retreat: a kind of force majeure designed to reset- not just our tongue- but the worldview that perceives a lonely gap between self and other and, in our attempts to bridge it, constantly makes the gap more real.
As we disinvest in the quest for horizontal intimacy and, instead, rest in the sublimity of the One Being, our lips become de-orphaned.
Saturn in Pisces empowers us to attune to the Greater Presence who, like a divine pharmacist, administers words like drugs, prescribing gazes that alternate between the tongue-in-cheek play of separate somebodyness and the sublime recognition of the One Being.
In the final stages, most impulses to display spiritual knowledge are nipped in the bud, replaced by a call to listen others into Being. Our eternal awareness is so gratefully and palpably felt that we meet the world’s manic distraction with unshakable faith and lightheartedness.
Finally, we realize: how we inhabit consciousness is our fundamental teaching and when teachable moments do arise, Saturn seizes them by fire-walking us quickly across the embers of pride and embarrassment so we can lead others in self-inquiry and prayer, confession and beseeching.
As Pluto in Capricorn exposes and collapses corrupt institutions and those in power attempt to pull the world down around them, legislating “order out of chaos” in order to maintain control, let us give thanks to Saturn in Pisces for providing a steady frame on which to hang our faith; the humility and disciplined daily practice we need to brighten consciousness, feel secure in God’s guidance and take solace in the flesh-friendly prayers of our childhood.
Dharma Bell Break #3
We close this month’s podcast with a Brave New Prayer called, Unruffled Paramedic.
Unruffled Paramedic
Unruffled Paramedic
on duty 24/7 inside us,
You who stays up all night
drinking karma like caffeine
Burst in
to this mother of all domestic disputes-
this restless, bruising blur
of believed-in thoughts
that fly
like badly aimed china
Crouch down
by our sick-humored soul,
playing possum-
flattened by the punch of time
Peel back
the embarrassing morgue cloth-
the drape of ashen civility
that only accentuates
the rise and fall
of our panting
Golden Retriever heart.
Then whisper
in Your menacingly tender way
the Hippocratic oath
that vowed our bodies
into being–
Those heartbreaking words that never fail
to lift us up,
rush us in
like the Red Cross
into earth’s steaming, twisted field-
A thriving, indigenous culture
of One Self
buried in the quake
of 10,000 situations.
©Hunter Reynolds
bravenewprayers.com
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