SKY DIVING down through the fontanelle, the soft center at the top of the baby’s cranium, the great I AM dons an Aries “crash helmet,” a provisional locus of identity and free will that activates the synapse-firing brain, fires up the fight-or-flight adrenal glands and drapes itself in a will-asserting muscular system. (Hunter Reynolds, from AstroChiFlow Part 1)
MOST BABIES ARRIVE head-first into this world. What is the Astrodharmic message behind this “me first” part of our anatomy? Simple: we must first and foremost take the head-thrusting risk of individuation so that we can exert our unique awakening impact upon the collective psyche. Over time, with the guidance of wise elders and a string of karmic stings, the adolescent thrust of personality is first humbled, then pixellated by the timeless presence it floats in. The personal will is transformed into a Tao-directed will. Our blustery me-story matures into “in-your-face emptiness” and the relaxed confidence of the “alpha dreamer.” This is the essential purpose of incarnation.
Why does heady Aries passion need footy Pisces surrender? Because only when an unabashedly singular Aries identity “bows down” to the moment-to-moment dictates of the larger Piscean presence that tempers and guides our desires (and toes!), can one say with any honesty that their will is “free” of the automation inherited from parents, society and past life conditioning. Only when masculine Aries desire fuses with the soul-sensing muse of feminine Pisces can we know something of non-duality. The body, after all, is a head-to-toe circuit whose poles are will and surrender, intention and allowing. Only when this circuit is alive and flowing are we ever truly “present” “awake” or “on purpose.” This is embodied yoga: the essential synaptic activity that the crash helmet was designed to enclose and protect.
The head is ruled by the warrior planet, Mars. This makes the bloody crowning of the head at child birth a martial arts move. Separate somebody status is achieved only through an aggressive punch: A punch through the spirit/matter veil. A punching out through the veil of the vagina. A punching through our limited conditioning about who we are. In this sense, meditation and self-inquiry are the ultimate acts of creative Mars aggression – the culmination of all the fleeting punches into pure awareness that preceded it. Without the passion of Aries will, our presence is not hot enough to transmute the ego into oceanic Pisces merging.
Think anger is embarrassingly primitive? Not so. Unpolluted by “you” statements and their accompanying emotional manipulation, anger is simply passion for clarity, truth and transformation.
To understand the right use of anger, we need to understand the reciprocal relationship between Aries and its polar opposite sign, Libra. In somatic scripture terms, this means understanding the relationship between the Aries adrenal glands and the Libra kidneys.
The adrenal grands are shaped like upward pointing spear tips that, astonishingly, sit atop our Libra kidneys. Their function is to produce hormones that regulate the fight-or-flight response, blood pressure, blood sugar levels and some sexual characteristics. The metaphoric parallel between these spear headed glands and the combative, action-oriented Aries archetype is obvious.
What is most fascinating, however, is how the organ corresponding to the most sovereign, hot and headstrong of archetypes (Aries) is literally sewn together with the kidneys – the organ corresponding to Libra, the most diplomatic, cooperative and friction-avoiding archetype. Is this not a striking metaphoric commandment to channel anger artfully – in ways that resolve into tenderness and intimacy?
Chogyam Tryungpa Rinpoche put it this way, “The wisdom side of anger is discriminating awareness.” The best place to aim this fiery confrontive energy? At our own “kleshas,” says the Dalai Lama.
“Klesha” is a Buddhist term that means, “states that cloud the mind and manifest in unwholesome actions.” Kleshas are what happens when we claim ownership of a style of awakening (disguised as a personality trait) instead of abiding as the loving vastness in which the style arises. In short, when anger is a cloud passing through God’s mind, nobody gets hurt.
CRASH HELMET KLESHA: Compulsive “Selfing”
Before listing the common Crash Helmet Kleshas, best to learn how to behold this hairdo’d scripture. After that, compassion and insight arise naturally. Here are two essential things to remember when surveying the parade of human heads:
1. Craniums are chivalrous gladiator gear. Consider the courage it takes for a soul to dive headfirst through the legs of a human mother into the dream of separation. Showing up for another crack at converting the ego’s nightmare of separation into the soul’s lucid dream could be the most chivalrous act a soul could ever take. In this sense, there are no commoners or cowards; everyone you’ve met – or will ever meet – is an Aries hero outfitted in gladiator gear. How do we know if someone is sincerely committed to spiritual awakening? They donned a hairy helmet.
2. Craniums are outward-facing universes. Before heads became associated with personality, they were outward-facing universes and, simply put, suffering is a measure of how often these outward facing universes exit themselves. By “exit” I mean failing to ask, As what am I looking out? No words can say, of course, but the daily living of this classic Advaita question naturally moves us from person, to presence, to awareness of even that. Bottom line: ego-dissolving self-inquiry is the quintessential synaptic activity that consciousness fashioned the crash helmet to encase and protect.
What happens when the Crash Helmet gets distracted from this inward pointing? In short, war. No longer floating, dreamlike, in the loving vastness that we are, ego feels orphaned and afraid. In a desperate, rogue attempt to reorient itself and establish solid ground, the Crash Helmet abandons its mandate to embody “in-your-face emptiness” and starts looking for egos to push up against. To distract from its fading ephemeralness, our Crash Helmet compulsively asserts its imaginary autonomy by looking for opportunities to butt up against whatever and whoever seems to provide some ego-hardening contrast. I call this “compulsive selfing.”
And what does this conflict-craving, self-a-holic face of ego actually look like? Here are some common Crash Helmet kleshas:
Impatient, angry, irritable, unconsciously combative and competitive, overly confrontational, dominating, arrogant, self-centered, bossy, impetuous, impulsive, haughty, superior, condescending.
How can you help? First, by keeping your own me-story pickle floating in the brine of storyless presence and remembering that anger, competitiveness and domination are, at their core, demonstrations of a healthy passion for individuation that is a prerequisite for full-bodied union. Second, by remembering that the soul intention behind all anger is more connection and intimacy. Thirdly, by remembering that blustery displays of selfhood are simply insecure attempts to establish a solid, secure locus of identity where there simply isn’t one. Are you Crash Helmet enough to let this break your heart? With eyes trained on their eternally untouched fullness of being, your fully engaged nonresistance to their fire has the best chance of disarming them back into the dissolving present.
CRASH HELMET SELF-INQUIRY PRACTICES
Look around. Notice how oppressively open-eyed and nervous Crash Helmets are. Why? Because the open eye delivers a steady stream of evidence that there are indeed imaginary others in contrast to which we can build a case for being a solid, separate somebody. In short, compulsive selfing needs compulsive “othering.” Here are three remedies:
1. Try interrupting your habit of open-eyed relating. Let your mouth continue moving while your eyes nest in the velvety, pre-incarnate void. From there, pause to ask yourself: “As what am I speaking?”
2. Meditate on the following question while observing a sea of chattering Crash Helmets: “Outward facing universe, why do you exit yourself?” Kindly dismiss all conceptual answers. The opening of your heart is answer enough.
3. Repeat, over and over, like a mantra, while surveying a crowd of people: “Crash Helmets riding on a timeless trance of toes.”
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