Astrodharma Talk: Losing Our Knowability

SELF-FORGETTING is what we all have in common. That, and a heartbreakingly resilient “nobility of soul.”

What does the March ramp-up to the lunar and solar eclipses (March 25th and April 8 ) ask of us? To take time to marinate in the pristine awareness that we are and strive for a better rendering of this inner Rembrandt onto the canvas of our hurtable human lives.

It’s Pisces season, after all. The veil is as thin as it gets.

To “marinate” is to take Pisces refuge: the precursor to Virgo “quality of service.” Apparently, we need an annual Pisces prod to remind us that “performing tasks in time” is not primarily why we are here. We came to spread the virus of eternity-with-eyes.

Who are we infecting? In short, “the knower.”

But here’s the catch:

Knowers know they’re a fraud and resent the reflection.

Somehow, we will need to break through the knower’s line of defense but no matter how earnestly we try, we are simply not up to the task. Why? Because…

Only the Unknowable is capable of feeling warmly okay with the knower.

Communion can only happen to the degree we drop our preoccupation with “selfing” and lose our knowability.

And how is “losing our knowability” achieved? No, not through ambitious meditation marathons. In its most prosaic, Virgo work-a-day form, this blessed beheading takes place during conversations sprinkled with “divine pauses” that break the momentum of ego.

Fine. but what, exactly, are we focusing on during these divine pauses?

Perhaps a felt sense of this:

In every human interaction, there are always only two things happening:

1) Automated identity-grasping

2) The merciful witnessing of that

Period. Full stop.

Ah, now we’re ready to let “space with a face” vocally vibrate the air around an “imaginary other.”

The Logic Behind Egoic Trance States

There is a rare psychiatric phenomenon called “Dissociative Fugue.” (Actually, it’s not so rare. It’s epidemic). Here’s the definition:

A reversible amnesia for one’s identity in conjunction with unexpected wandering or travel.

Yikes. Can you think of a better description of the human condition?

Bottom line: until we pivot regularly out of our Fugue states, we’re speaking Fugue-to-Fugue. We don’t know who we are and we don’t know who we’re talking to. 

Yes, the passage of time -and lifetimes- will eventually break the Fugue, but it’s a painful, drawn out affair and, God forgive us, we’ve dragged far too many souls into our sloppy self-realization process.

Thankfully, it only takes a few fugue-recovered friends (“sangha”) to speed up our Self-remembering until, finally, we dare to see it:

Everyone we meet is weaving in and out of Dissociative Fugue States, hoping and praying that WE might be the one who jolts their memory.

Which leads us back to our original premise:

In every human interaction, there are always only two things happening: automated identity-grasping and the merciful witnessing of that.

Sounds stark, I know. 

But remember: automation is the real party-pooper and– with nothing to defend or prove– the Merciful Witness is delighted to jump onto virtually any stage set: from the hilariously funny to the gravely serious, the wordlessly silent to the intellectually rigorous.

This is where Astrodharma shines. Archetypal literacy provides us with a felt understanding of the seductive logic (and the positive intent) behind the 12 archetypal identity-grabs. This helps us meet a full spectrum of minds with compassion and “targeted invitations to inquire.”

The Whirlwind of Selfing

Ego is a fugue-wandering “experience junkie–” all verb and no noun: a desperate whirlwind of “selfing” in the infinite expanse of the Divine Mind.

Murdered by stillness, the Robosapien mind must stay perpetually busy “liking, disliking or being (aggressively) indifferent to other ego’s style of identity-grasping, so as to strengthen its shaky claim to personhood.

For the fugue wanderer, it’s a mater of survival. His entire world flies apart without a steady diet of desire and distraction to drip-feed a sense of doership into the disorienting majesty of “what is.”

The Merciful Witness, on the other hand, has absolutely no intention at all. It simply shines as itself. In the face of our agenda-less celebration of Being, minds must work very hard to not join us.

When the “clenched fist of knowing” playfully releases, the fugue state in others naturally releases as well and, together, we recover the soul-mirroring joy of the divine play.

Breath is not holy or evil.
No different the vaporous mind.

Welcome to the “church of full arrival” where everyone is perfect and there’s a boatload of astrologically ordained work to be done.

Hunter Reynolds 2024

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