Shine on, Shine on Harvest Moon.

I’ve been doing a refresher in esoteric astrology. That led me to a consideration of my natal chart. I looked at all those planets in Leo and Libra, except for the rising sign, the moon and lonely Uranus, that’s where they all are. Everything is sitting in the fifth and eighth house. The eighth house is ruled by Scorpio. You may not be well versed in these things but Libra has to do with balance or the lack thereof and Leo has to do with the vital life force.

I noticed how the whole movement of my life had to do with bringing the vital life force into balance. The eighth house deals with things like reincarnation, legacies, death- or the state of transition that it implies and the use of practical occult forces. There’s a far greater wealth of detail that relates to all of these than this simplistic overview but that remains available for the curious. I’m not an astrologer in the usual sense but I am very curious about planetary forces and acquiring a greater skill in adjusting to their actions in my life.

I had intended to continue in summating from the series of posts dealing with my passage through the phenomenal realm but... Nah... I find myself moving on, or in, without any great concern for where I’ve been or who I might have been for whatever while that occurred. Personal history can always serve as an example but I’m not a collector of toenail clippings or locks of hair. I don’t muse over photo albums or reminisce about glory days over a beer at the pub. I don’t need to reinforce the evidence that I was an idiot at times or dispense self-abuse over mistakes in judgment. We all make them based on what we thought was real at the time. Then we learn.

My feeling is that God has a lot more interest in the passage of those who risk mistakes; who live in the teeth of it in pursuit of the heart of it. Those who love much are forgiven much. I think God is less proactive in the lives of those who cower in fear of error and embarrassment and who remain content to serve temporal interests. Passion is a fine thing and desire is the medium for the expression of God’s will. Everyone has their period of passion. It usually comes in tandem with rebellion, which is usually the process by which the personal self defines itself, until... settling for some compromise of arrangement between the impossible dream and the demands of the marketplace. Very seldom do individuals carry their passion with them the entire way. You see it in the lives of artists, true spiritual seekers and others whose avocation is a burning need.

Zeal, by its precipitate nature, can take you very quickly to your destination. That’s wonderful if you’re headed the right way and very possibly calamitous if you’re not. Even so, once you find you’ve been wrong you may instantly become right, with the added benefit of the wisdom your mistake has conferred upon you.

The greatest benefit of spiritual zeal is realized when it has surrender as a companion. How can you receive understanding of the thing you pursue if you don’t give way before it? You cannot hope to comprehend in advance of the things arrival. It has to interpret itself to you. That which you pursue resides beyond the parameters of ordinary reason and logic. You can’t analyze the brimming unknown from a position of limited knowing. It is the surrender which accompanies zeal/passion which provides the posture of humility necessary for understanding.

We have gotten so used to the self we have assumed; this masking persona, that we are generally unaware of the presence of the real self that interpenetrates and surrounds. The assumed self has defined conditions and things according to the limits of its understanding and the definitions of good and evil assigned by personal preference or accepted wholesale from the messages of the big billboards of the day. This efficiently imprisons the assumed self in a confinement of its own definitions. Sooner or later, the sense of this confinement brings about the thirst for a greater freedom; the passion or zeal to pursue it. This confinement then becomes a good thing because it sets the stage for the real effort of this life, of every life. Hey! It’s all part of the service, thank you very much. And please, don’t come back.

You might say that the devil pushes and God leads “Get thee behind me Satan.” It really comes down to good driving skills or a clearer perspective of your place in the vehicle. The horses of appetite are very strong and the shoulder of the road falls immediately away into a quick darkness. Lucky for you that the guy behind the wheel knows where he’s going. You’re even luckier if you’re not involved in grabbing for the wheel; screaming, shouting, jumping all about, fighting in the back seat or throwing beer cans out of the window.

I can see where I went wrong- if such a judgment can be made; let me rather say, I see how I made my ride less pleasant than it might have been. But there is no wrong direction if you are looking for God. Going faster though can make for a scarier ride and harder bumps.

Pain is a focusing of the mind upon a point of tension or tearing caused by an extreme. Balance is the key. Certain oriental medicines take this as their main intent. Balance however is not a stationary state; scales unmoving. It is a constant adjusting back to center. God the center may be motionless and precede all action but you are not, do not; at least for the sake of this argument. You get to a point, if your zeal continued to travel with surrender, where you can experience and witness the adjustment without interference.

Let’s imagine that you are standing at the midpoint of a see saw with one foot on either side of center. Imagine that there is a pipe rising from the Earth and that it feeds upward from a wellspring of bliss. There is a hole in the center of the see saw and the pipe mouth rests a small distance below this hole. When one side of your nature or the other moves toward an extreme that part of the see saw will go down and simultaneously slide incrementally in the other direction as well, thereby obscuring the hole. Within a certain range the bliss will flow, then not. It is not only individuals who close off these holes, but communities and countries and cultures.

All our experiments with government, religion and social engineering are meant to be an effort toward a greater flow of whatever the bliss stands for to a larger or smaller segment of the population. Definitions of what this bliss is differ. The location of this bliss has been spotted everywhere. This bliss dresses as harlot, harridan and queen. This bliss is one thing at the source and everything at the mouth. This bliss is folded, bent, spindled and mutilated. Like quicksilver it has a tendency to rejoin itself. It never gets dirty no matter how foul it appears.

The key thing to remember is that the bliss is looking for you at the same time. In the process it may change into anything to entertain, instruct or seemingly torment you on the way. Remembrance is a certain guarantee of discovery. If you practice the presence of it, it will tend to appear with increasing frequency. It understands the degree and quality of your interest. It knows far more about your intentions than you ever will. It can’t be fooled. It appears in front of you in every moment in myriad disguise. You have seen it in disgraceful garments and rejected it out of hand. It is radiant beyond measure. It is encompassing and lit up like the sun in every molecule of your frame. Your fear is the measure of its distance apart and your ignorance the veil upon its face.

Visible sings: ♫ Something New ♫
Lyrics (pops up)