Evolution: A Story from the Stars

From an astrological point of view the entire 2012 movement can be seen as a warning from the creative unconsciousness of the human soul. The lesson or the goal of this astrologically based cultural movement (Mayan or otherwise) has always been the same: let's produce less fate and create more free will.

The first mistake we humans have made throughout the ages is to believe that the soul "has" free will. In fact the soul IS free will. The second mistake we've made is to believe in fully or to dismiss fully the prophecies of Astrologers and Shamans and Sages rather than to listen carefully to their prophecies, and if they resonate to change our ways. Prophecy is nothing more than the prediction of an outcome based on the momentum of a current unconscious trend. The prophet's ability to pin point a date where the unconscious card castle will fall apart is mysterious, but it has always relied upon the prophet or astrologer's understanding of natural rhythms and cycles of nature (human nature, planets and ecosystems, etc). The same alignment in the stars or planets that may spell the disaster of a King or Kingdom can adapt and create something entirely different if the King, knowing or listening to the flow of nature uses his free will to humble himself and realign things. This is why prophets always say, "change your ways or else."

Herein lies the ultimate misunderstanding about astrology and prophecy amongst the majority of human beings. We want to know if it's "fate or free will?" "Which one is it?" we ask ourselves. Is there an all powerful God behind the scenes planning our lives for us, or is there some all powerful planetary mechanics or polar magnetic fields rotating life in an ultimately predictable way that's just too big and too wise for us to know about yet? Or is the Universe essentially random, meaningless, or perhaps does it display a certain free willed creativity of its own? Maybe we're free and meaning making is just an evolutionary bi-product of that freedom.

Yet the answers that we are discovering in fields like Shamanism, Astrology, Quantum Mechanics, and through daily spiritual practices like yoga, meditation, and prayer (to name a few) are all one and the same: fate and the all powerful, sometimes terrible, Sky God appears only when we (individually or collectively) are not creating and living from a conscious alignment with our soul, which IS the free will. It's as if fate and the terrible sky god are actually a caricature of our own unconsciousness. Make stupid decisions from old patterns and unconsciousness and some really scary looking stuff shows up. Much of organized religion, in fact, has been based upon the placation or the fear of this element of our unconsciousness arriving at untimely moments. We've refused to understand the appearance of "bad fate" or the terrible sky God (the 2012 disaster film of our lives or of the species) as a picture of ourselves that has been amassing over many accrued moments of unconscious creating.

Spiritual people often try to short circuit or decode fate or the terrible Sky God by simply holding an idea of oneness or an emotional attachment to the idea of oneness. People say, "Bliss! Peace! Love! Harmony! Oneness! We're all one thing!" And ultimately understanding the appearance of fate as a product of unconsciousness DOES suggest that we are total beings disconnecting ourselves from ourselves; if we look into the Sky God deeply enough and with enough stillness, we do see ourselves and we see the oneness, but having had the experience of oneness a few times, having recognized the unconsciousness as an aspect of ourselves, does not make us ultimately free. It cannot make us ultimately free because we already are. So it's important that when we parade around emotionally attached to freedom and bliss and oneness that we ask ourselves if our joy isn't being inspired by our fear of yet another encounter with our unconsciousness. Because who wants to see the unconscious bad fate or terrible sky God appearing in the now terrifying costume of oneness and bliss? Not me!

So as an astrologer, knowing that the bliss of oneness and the recognition of the whole is something we should learn to live from as a quiet and simple fact as much as any "new age belief" I've asked myself how does one actually free oneself from the reappearance of the fates and the scary sky gods (when I use the term sky gods I'm imagining the God from the biblical book of Job I grew up having to read in church!)? The answer I've come to through my practice with many astrology clients all asking essentially the same question is this: it takes a lot of time and a lot of work (sometimes suffering).

Another attempt to decode fate and the sky God has come from smart people who say that time is an illusion. They might as well be saying "it's all maya." All of this interplay we get ourselves into is an illusion of time and space; we are already free and simply experiencing the contours and textures of our own freedom. I agree that this is true. And I agree that this point of view is actually afforded to us human beings through things like trance, ecstatic religious experiences, psychedelics, the mind, sexuality, etc. When we somehow see that the external world is a manifestation of our creative unconsciousness (all of ours together) time collapses into itself and its linear sequential nature ceases. Time becomes more like a wave and less like a succession of single points. But what I've also noticed is that  time returns, eventually, to a linear movement.

Once back to the linear it concerns me to try and speak of the non-linear experience of time. Mostly because to speak of the non-linear experience of time from within the linear experience of time is to somehow nostalgize and dogmatize non-linear time and make it into something it wasn't or isn't. To know how to actually speak of time, in the fullness of its nature (time as an experience of change in both a wave and a particle state) it seems that we need to have many (paradoxically successive) experiences of going out of time and returning back to it. In practical terms we need to experience the oneness, return to the dualistic, and then repeat the cycle many times over before we start to understand the interdepenence and integral union of the two. As an astrologer I am concerned that much of our spirituality, and much of the 2012 movement for example, is starting to focus on the oneness as something "opposed to" the dualistic.

For example, many spiritual people say that the ego is a product of dualism and separation whereas the soul is non dualistic and unified with everything. This obviously sets up yet another, perhaps subtler, dualism. People will say time is not real and that something else is realer (again a dualistic comparison is being made). In the 2012 movement people will say "We humans are lost in unconsciousness!" yet here "we are" proclaiming it consciously. Similar funky paradoxes are being explored in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Critics point out that Main Street and Wall Street are in bed with each other as much as they are separate from each other. People say, "Don't worry about Wall Street, work on removing reliance on credit cards in your personal life first, you hypocrite!" Others say, "confront them and yourself at the same time." Is anybody really "wrong" or "right?"

At the outset of perhaps the most prophetically heralded year of modern civilization how do we hold dualism and oneness together? How exactly do we change our ways, personally and collectively? It can all get pretty overwhelming when we explore the contradictions of our truth claims.

The answer from the astrological point of view is very simple. The appearance of fate is not to be feared because it is an evolutionary ally of the soul, even if it is painful or scary. Does this mean that we get lazy and that we stop doing our work, stop trying things like Occupy Wall Street, stop having debates about Occupy Wall street, stop doing our yoga or stop praying or stop eating certain foods or stop living a certain lifestyle because there is just no point to it? Or should we really aggressively change our ways? Something in the middle? What system is the correct system to use for this change? Of course all of these are good questions, but the point of what is happening is not the answer to any of these questions ultimately. Because questions are not answered ultimately; they are answered temporally.

The point of what is happening on this planet right now is not a specific answer to a specific question or the emergence of a "higher than" system of truth. What is happening is the perfection of our free will, which is our soul itself. This process is beyond what we can do about it because the very idea that we can "do something about it" is passing away as more of who we ARE is being revealed. Does that mean that we should stop anything? No. Giving up entirely on willed change is no more possible than perfecting the human species overnight. Evolution is happening whether we like it or not and it embraces everything simultaneously. This universal process is the nature of the soul itself. It is the evidence of the life of the soul itself. As a species we should continue to make the best decisions we know how to make. We should think critically, recognize that violence and chaos are not any more necessary than anything else as a means to an end, and we should try to educate people about the evolutionary process that is happening rather than any one truth that tries to arrest the process of life (which can't be arrested anyway).

On a personal level we should each do the same work. Make smart decisions. Love others as you learn to love yourself and vice versa. We are all connected so why not try to help out? We're doing so anyway. You are not alone. None of us are alone. So we should have courage. When fate shows up in our lives we should seek to understand ourselves in our circumstances. We should seek to understand difficult truths as much as pleasant ones. We should be willing to be wrong and be willing to be right. Be should be willing to be one and be willing to be separate. Be willing to experience the emergence of our soul which is appearing from the flip-flopping tension of all these opposites. We shouldn't worry "too" much because the soul cannot do anything BUT emerge. On a personal level, we should take our time if we want to; it's infinite. And we should trust our soul, we should trust this overwhelming freedom because it's even beyond infinite; it's eternal.