How Ayahuasca Taught Me Astrology: Thoughts In The Mind Of God

Transcript:

Hey everyone, this is Acyuta-bhava from Nightlight Astrology and I'm really excited today to begin a new series inspiration for which came after a couple of weeks of vacation time during which I had the time to really sit back and reflect on my journey as an astrologer over the past 12 years. And one of the things I realised that I wanted to do for myself and I thought might also make an interesting series was to sit down and really try to map out how ayahuasca and my journey with Ayahuasca shamanism played a really integral role in my early astrological education. So for those of you who don't know about my background, prior to becoming a professional astrologer, and getting very deeply into yoga, for about 10 years, I was really immersed in the world of psychedelics and ayahuasca shamanism in particular. And that journey is really what brought me to yoga and astrology. And maybe I'll tell that, you know, that element of the story as we go along through this series. But for about the first four years of my professional journey with astrology are the early part of my studies into the early first few years of my professional practice. I was learning astrology in a really bizarre way, whenever the more I go along in my career, the more I reflect on it, the more I realised it was a really unique way of learning astrology.

I am someone in the beginning, I had a few teachers that were instrumental, and I'll probably mention them as a serious goes on and I tell some of some more, you know, personal anecdotes about specific ayahuasca experiences that I had. But early on, I was just reading voraciously, I had gone through several grad programmes. And one of the benefits of going through graduate school programmes is that you learn how to study on your own. And you'll learn how to do a lot of research on your own independently. So with that in mind, I took two studying astrology in the same way that I had learned to be a research student in graduate school, and just was reading voraciously. And as I did that, over the first like four years of really starting to study astrology, about two years later, I would end up sort of starting a practice. And then, for about the first two years of professional practice, I was still regularly while seeing clients for the first time, still continuing to read voraciously. And also still regularly drinking Ayahuasca in ritualistic ceremonies from a variety of different traditions from South Central America.

So a lot of what I learned about astrology in the beginning came not just from books, but from this weird combination of what I was reading combined from the experiences that I was having in these altered states that created that are the Ayahuasca experience. So this series is dedicated to sort of unpacking that. And again, I'm doing it mostly for myself because I want to be able to remember, you know, I'm getting older and I'm like, I realised I was on vacation, like, first of all, this is a really fun Jupiter Neptune thing to do as Jupiter and Neptune are coming together in the sky right now in the spring of 2022, for those who might be listening, you know, some years down the line or something. It seems like a fun way of of, you know, utilising the planetary energies in the sky right now, Jupiter, Neptune can be very otherworldly, and sort of mystical. So I thought, well, this would make for a fun series, while Jupiter and Neptune are perfecting. But hopefully, it lives on for a while, because I think when I looked at it, and I sat down, and I started writing, and writing and writing, I have like 50 or 60 ideas for episodes already. So I think this is something that can have some, you know, I can keep doing these episodes for a while. And hopefully you guys find them interesting because I drank in over 100 Ayahuasca ceremonies and the bulk of those came while I was studying astrology, and a lot of those experiences were absolutely fundamental to the way I now express astrology and the way that I started to learn how to read charts and how to think about astrology in general, both philosophically and sort of technically or practically.

So the purpose of the series is to tell some fun stories from ayahuasca experiences, which are otherworldly, and you know, really fun to recall. And also to, in particular, look at the stories that were very pivotal or important for my development as an astrologer. So hope you guys find this series interesting. In this first episode, in particular, we're going I'm going to be talking about maybe the the most basic starting point that I could think of with drinking Ayahuasca and studying astrology simultaneously, maybe the very first lesson I learned, so I'll get into that in a second. In the meantime, I want to remind all of you guys that as of right now here as I'm recording this in the early part of April 2022 All of my astrology courses for the year ahead are 50% off go ahead and check that out on my website nightlight astrology calm. You can come and study in any of my upcoming programmes the spring in, they all start in June my year one programme starts in June, ancient astrology for the modern mystic my year. programme my horary programme you can also pick up readings and passages the programme that starts in the fall or you could pick up the programme and start the year one class that starts in November there's always two per year so, if you have any questions about the programmes after you go to the website, nightlight astrology, click on the Courses tab, you don't find the answer you're looking for there. Feel free to email us info at nightlight astrology.com. And as always, if you enjoy my channel, help the channel grow by liking, subscribing, sharing your comments. And if you want updates for when I'm live streaming click the notification bell for to get those updates after you subscribe. By the way, transcripts of all of my daily talks can be found on my website, nightlight astrology.com and the blog page. So if you'd like to read the transcripts of these videos, you can also check those out. They've been there forever. And I've just failed to mention it. So I should mention it. It's there. Check it out.

In the meantime. So let's so let's go ahead and dive in. So those of you who don't know, again, my background, the actual day that I founded my business nightlight astrology was the day that my book came out. My book is called 'Fishers of Men: the Gospel of an Ayahuasca Vision Quest'. It was published by Archer penguin in July of 2010. It's kind of like a creative nonfiction memoir re account of a bunch of years drinking Ayahuasca, and the way that there was some I grew up a preacher's kid. And it's about the relationship between me my father, the Christian faith, and the unravelling of some of I would call it the, the wounds of that, that that Christian inheritance in my family, which happened as I went through a long series of ayahuasca experiences, my father would eventually go through some ayahuasca experiences as well as my sister. And the book is sort of about a generational, you know, healing of I think some would call them Christian wounds. At any rate, I hope you guys will check that out. If you want a little bit more background about me and my my story, my journey with Ayahuasca. At this point, I look back on that book, and I go, like, man, I was just a kid when I wrote it. But I think you know, I think a lot of it still holds up. So I hope you guys, if you haven't checked it out, maybe you'll enjoy it. I think the Kindle version is still available, if the others are, you're going to get a used copy, because the hardback is no longer in print, you should be able to get it on Amazon.

So if I had to summarise the very first and most foundational thing that I learned about astrology, or something that would become so fundamental to my journey as an astrologer, from the very beginning, it would be this idea that reality itself is archetypal. And I didn't necessarily have the words that I have for these things. Now, as I was going through the experiences then, and that's what makes this a little tricky is it's like I have I am encapsulating lessons that I was learning that I now have the language for, but was just learning and discovering the language of back then and that makes this you know, like a little, it's hard to report accurately on what the experiences are like, because a ayahuasca experiences altered states of consciousness themselves are very hard to describe. But also because you know, those experiences while the realisations were there not all of the language or like, integration of those experiences was yet there. So I just want to say that from the start, this will be a little tidier in hindsight than it was at the at the time, if that makes sense. But let's begin with this idea that reality is archetypal, what did how did that? How did that realisation occur? And this is not something that happened in just one ceremony. If I had to put a timeline on it, I would say perhaps over the course of my first 30 ceremonies or something like that, this and that was a time that I that astrology was coming into my life and I was starting to study it at the same time. So I'm doing a lot of studying of astrology and then going into altered states.

Now I believe, fundamentally, that if you were studying acupuncture, you'd probably be getting a lot of realisations about acupuncture. If you studied astrology, so it's not as though I feel like oh, Ayahuasca chose you to impart the knowledge of astrology some some chosen child crap or some you know not, that's not where I'm going with this. I think I was steeping myself in the study of astrology. And so naturally, those altered states somehow catered to where my focus was spiritually and intellectually. So anyway, that just doesn't it just before I get into this so what what was the so maybe over the first 30 ceremonies, I started to get this i this this realisation that reality is archetypal. What is archetype? What is an archetype? What does it mean that reality is archetypal. I had studied literature, I had a MA in English language and literature and then an MFA in creative writing. And through those graduate programmes, one of the things that I studied was the archetypes of literature, of fiction, of film, of different forms of writing poetry, film fiction, short stories. So, I was very familiar with the idea of mythological archetypes, literary constructs, the different literary archetypes, like the, the thief, or the, the knight or the, the damsel in distress, you know, all these, these kinds of timeless themes that are both a part of the fabric of art, culture, film history, you know, personal narrative biography.

So, this seemed to be something that was also coming not only out of my study of astrology, but out of my background in literary theory and an English and creative writing and things like that. But here's how it actually came about. So, one of the things that happened consistently for me, all 10 years of drinking Ayahuasca and over the course of all the 100 + ceremonies that I sat in, often times ayahuasca for not just myself, but for many people will bring up memories. Now, a memory is always like a copy, a reflection of the original, like a photograph, you know, a photograph is not the experience, it's sort of a reflection or, like a representation of the moment or something like that, that you can hold and look at and reflect upon and things like that. So a lot of my ayahuasca experiences involved memories of trauma, not that I've had, I don't consider myself to have had like, the world's biggest mountain of trauma or anything, but I think, being human means being traumatised, that's just part of like life is, you know, suffering. So a lot of people when they drink Ayahuasca, whether they've had a mountain of it, or you know, a molehill of it will go into it very deeply. I mean, and intensely and in some ways, it sort of levels the playing field and says, like, all trauma is trauma is trauma.

But I had a lot of a lot of what came up were memories, and imagistic visual representations of things that had happened that were difficult. It could have been something from the third grade in school, it could have been something from church or family, it could have been, you know, anything, anything, and I never really knew what was going to come up. It's one of the mysteries and thrills and scariest freakiest parts of drinking Ayahuasca is that you never really know what's going to come up. But what I noticed is that whenever a memory came up, it was never singular. It's not like in Ayahuasca space, the way I would describe it as a memory is not like remembering it in a super linear concrete way as you might if someone said, Hey, do you remember that one time when we were riding the bus and you spilled that Kool Aid or something like that? And you go, Yep, I remember that happening. And you kind of replay it in your head, and probably as much of a one to one representation of what happened is possible. Ayahuasca memories don't work like that exclusively, memories become mandalas. And it's beautiful.

And it's weird, because one of the things that happens is first of all, like, I'll give you an example, because I think it'll make more sense if I use an example. When I was in the seventh grade, I went through about a year in my life where I was just stealing all sorts of random crap. And I mean, it could have been someone's lock from their locker. Right? I mean, it could have been, and it was not just me, but me and like a couple of friends. We were like, thieves for we had like a thief club for like a year. We stole CDs from the drugstore, we stole candy before we went to movie theatres, you know, it was always something and it was like mostly, like really petty, stupid stuff. And a lot of the times stuff that was just it was more about taking it than having something right. So it's interesting. So, during these, a lot of the early ayahuasca experiences that I had memories about that time period would come up, I carried a lot of guilt and grief and shame about that period. Even though I grew out of it. I still carried it in me. And one of the interesting things that would happen and this is One in particular. But this is an example of what happened with lots of different kinds of memories. I was remembering thievery, and then almost like a branch like a mandala with a central hub like the memory of stealing something. It was in particular at someone's lake house, it was like a cabin they had on a lake. And we were there for like a church function. And my friend and I found a jar of coins. And we ended up stealing a pillowcase from somebody's bed in like a guest room. And then pouring the coins into the pillowcase and managing to sneak them into our backpack with our swimming suits. And, you know, going home and then like divvying it up or something. So it was that memory. And I was like, I'm sorry, by the way that you have to hear my terrible seventh grade exploits. But like, that's the story. So we that was what happened.

Then, I suddenly started seeing all different kinds of images of Robin Hood, who, as you probably know, stole from the rich to give to the poor. And when I was maybe about six years old for Halloween, I went as Robin Hood. And in my backyard, my dad and I used to fire compound bows and my dad was a deer hunter. So you know, he had a nice big compound bow and I was learning to fire compound bow. And, you know, we would target practice on like a hay bale in the backyard, and shooting bow and arrow. And I was like really excited to go as Robin Hood. And I love the Disney movie Robin Hood. So suddenly, it was like this Mandala of like Robin Hood memories from my childhood. And then it was images of Robin Hood that had nothing to do with me. But that had to do with the same like archetype. For example, I saw, like poor people in the cold, being driven to steal things for the sake of survival. Almost like the what's the story that I'm thinking of... Les Miz? Right, I think he steals like a loaf of bread or something because he's starving.

There were beggars at the gates of a castle being ignored by wealthy people. There was the I saw someone picking a lock to get into a place that had like secret treasure in it. The end and I saw a like a child outside of a gate with bars maybe like a prison like looking through it wanting to get out. It was really interesting to me because as I'm looking at this memory of myself, the memory became like this mandala filled with all different kinds of images. And the images were you know, what I didn't necessarily have the words for at that time, but they were archetypal. Right? My story is a part of human stories that have happened in different time periods over and over in different combinations and permutations. And there's a sense of the thief as noble, the thief, as someone who's fallen on hard times and is being treated unfairly, the person who's being left out, the person who's trying to get away with something steal a secret that maybe doesn't belong to them. I saw themes of envy, like literally people like just people I had never even seen before faces I had never even seen before like people that you see in dreams that you have no idea who they are looking at other people enviously and just like exploding tapestry of images that were all about, like envy and unequal distribution of wealth and trying to steal secrets that you should be more patient to acquire and just like all sorts of stuff, and what I mean practically, this in itself could get so intense, this kind of experience could get so intense go so deeply. It was like my memory was like a suture. And it was like and like until you know, like, packed really tightly in like unravelling all of the individual strands, so that I could see that my experience was a timeless experience, was a an experience that spans across history and time and it depersonalised it for me. But to the point where, you know, you you're realising how deeply I'm in, meshed within this drama of human life, that I might literally have to scream or puke. It would get so intense. Other times it wouldn't other times, I'd just be like, Whoa, you know, just Holy crap. Like, what am I looking at here? Am I looking at my life? Am I looking at eternity? You know what I mean? So, um, memories were mandalas.

I never had memories that were very linear. It might be linear at the start, but then it would like unfurl into this total tapestry of metaphors and images and associated memories and, and sometimes they were all being tied back together. For example, I remember, one of the big pukes that I had was in realising that part of my thievery, a lot of my thievery happened at the church. I used to actually steal money from the soda machine, we would take the key, open it up, take some soda, and then empty the coins, like literally. And so I remember at one point, that I had this realisation that my dad had a lot of power, and he had like, a lot of position in the church, you know, he's the pastor, people look up to him. And I remember feeling left out. And because I felt left out, then I felt entitled to take something for my own from the church. And that that realisation didn't come like through some inner moral Jiminy Cricket conviction, it came through an exploding mandala of images that had to do with all different kinds of faces and people and scenes that we're all pointing towards feeling left out, feeling left out, and then taking something because you feel left out and you want something for your own, and then just barfing in a bucket. What an insight, you know what I mean? I mean, that was a that was, I remember that one specifically, how liberating it felt to. It's okay, you felt left out. And you did that, because you in Part felt left out. But that wasn't the only reason you did it. There's not just like one reason that we do things, there might have been five or six more barfs that I can remember that all had to do with going into that one year phase of my life where I stole stuff. Right.

So as I was going along, and studying astrology, one of the things that I started to realise is that experience itself, and events themselves are multifaceted. They're like jewels, just like one memory would explode into this Mendala of different associated images, archetypes, characters, thoughts, motivations, which would often lead back to an understanding of my own self in the midst of these eternal themes and storylines. That might be quite cathartic or healing. Still, the underlying what's call it philosophical or metaphysical realisation was that reality is archetypal experience is archetypal. Which is to say that it's like an associative mandala of themes that are multi dimensional, variegated multifaceted, and they're just packed into experiencea a nuclear bomb waiting to go off if we have the patience to move into this kind of transcendental meditation upon experience itself, which is what Ayahuasca often does for people, whether they like it or not, and whether you're ready for it or not.

Alright, so number two: thoughts were stories. So thoughts became mandalas just like trippy man. But thoughts were also stories. And I came to realise that it wasn't just like memories became mandalas. But then thoughts, words, like mental judgments, or, or like, assertions or questions or random thoughts on the radar, you know, what I mean? Whatever they were, whatever, mind communication was streaming across my ticker, you know, they were stories too. For example, I might find myself thinking, I am weak, or I am fake, or I am pathetic, or, or I am great, or I'm wonderful, or I'm attractive. Whatever thoughts were appearing very similarly, would immediately be projected into especially not immediately, but if I dwelled upon any of them, I mean, they might just be streaming. But if any of them like caught my attention, my heart catches a beat, the rhythm is stalled somehow in my whole physiological system, then that may also be blown out that thought into a web of visuals, characters, associated words or voices. That's the scary part too, you know, if you don't like hearing voices in your head, you know, be careful drinking Ayahuasca. So voices characters, people from different times caricatures of the thoughts themselves, similarly bursting out in in multi dimensional colourful webs. Okay, so memories became mandalas thoughts were stories were mandalas like that. And so this very naturally over time, and it's not just all at once, I would say 30 ceremonies came in, I started to realise that the mind is a mirror. It's like a magical the My mind is not who I am. I'm looking into the mind, which is like this interesting wishing pool. So what I think is really complicated, because it's actually like, a lot of what I think is not actually me thinking it's like, words being formed around impressions and stimulus that are in the environment around me in the same way that, you know, you might think, Well, I'm dreaming of water, but actually, your hand is touching some water. And so then you think, Well, I'm dreaming of water, but actually water is, is just dreaming, right? It's streaming. So it was a very interesting experience to realise, first of all, to get some distance from the mind and to realise that it's this weird reflective medium. Not surprisingly, I would later learn that Indian astrologers associate the moon with the mind another reflective dish in the skies, a little satellite. The third house, what we now associate with the mind was originally the house of the moon.

At any rate, the mind is a mirror for experience, but I am not the mind I'm somehow looking into it. And it's really important to have just a little bit of distance from this or regular Moon dish that's like in my brain, and in my body, and who I actually am, which I'll get into maybe in a future episode, but just the idea originally that because memories could become mandalas thoughts could explode into these mandalas. And all of which had these timeless themes, characters, caricatures, interactions of different fields of themes and experience. I just started to realise like my mind is a mirror.

And that was one of the early starting points of my astrological education because as I was studying what was being taught in astrological books, whether it was reading Ptolemies Tetra Byblos, for the first time, or if I was reading Liz Greene or Richard Tarnas, or Stephen Forrest, or Stephen Arroyo, or any, you know, anyone. The ancient astrologers said that the heavenly motions of the planets, they were said to be thoughts in the mind of God, thoughts in the mind of God, which are mirrored here on Earth, as the field of streaming experiences, both inside of us and outside of us and around us. And so the psychedelic experience of ayahuasca for me very naturally over time, and having these types of experiences that I'm describing started showing me my mind is a mirror, I am not the mind, I'm looking into the mind. I'm a conscious entity that's like looking into the mind. I do have some agency that is affecting what streaming across the mind, but so does the environment. In fact, a lot more than I think I'm in control. I'm not, I'm unconsciously not aware of often enough, the environments impressions on my mind. That was a huge step for me to realise that and something that was one of the earliest realisations to convince me that meditation was an absolutely necessary part of life if I was going to have any kind of conscious relationship with the kind of stimuli surrounding me all the time. But maybe again, some other time, we'll get into that.

Number five, much of what I think are my own thoughts are actually reflections of the heavenly bodies and the interactions of their archetypal fields. So it was these kinds of experiences, delivering this insight that my mind is like a mirror, I'm not the mind I'm looking into it, but I also affect it. And much of what I think are my own thoughts are coming from the environment around me or, as I'm studying astrology, I'm starting to realise are actually reflections of these heavenly bodies and the interactions of their archetypal fields. I started realising that the there's an intelligence behind what is appearing in those mandalas and webs that come up as I think a thought or have a memory that the kinds of experiences that I have in general, in other words are being shaped by the time signatures and intelligent, meaningful interactions of different almost like literary fields. Themes, characters, and not just one. That's why they're called Gods, right? Because it's just like, you know, understanding that when Mars is squaring Saturn, and I'm in a ceremony, the types of things that I'm encountering the types of thoughts, the types of memories, the type of healing, that it is all, very much related to the interaction of these two gods that are squaring each other in the sky right now, that became apparent, you know, early on in my process of studying astrology and having psychedelic experiences, you can just feel and notice it.

So this realisation was slow in coming, but it was basically that a lot of what I think of as my thoughts come from the environment, or more specifically, the experiences, thoughts and things streaming through that I'm like, encountering across the mirror of the mind, which is very easy to get identified with you think you are that mind, and then you try to control it and the shit show is full on at that point. But I started realising it's the planets. The ancient said that the heavenly rotations of the planets and all their interactions is like a heavenly language that gives us signs and omens that gives us images, some indication as to the streaming thoughts in the mind of God. I mean that's a lot. That's a lot to unpack. I'm not sure I even still understand what the hell that means. But I understood it enough, based on the experiences I was having to be like, yep, that checks out.

And then it was that much of what I think are my own thoughts are actually being there the reflections of these archetypal interactions. Then, remember I'm reading a lot of astrology and then having these kinds of experiences over and over especially around memories and the processing of my own internal judgments about experience or or my past or other people or life or politics or whatever, any thoughts and judgments, assertions, fears, aggrandisement you know, the ego checks in my mind and in my body, and in my past, they're all being unpacked in the same sort of translucent multi dimensional archetypal way that's in there. It's it's really profound to unpack ourselves and experience on this level. See if I can get my camera back. Here we go. I started to realise that astrologers what is an astrologer, and I started to realise an astrologer is not totally different from shaman, or diviners of all different kinds in all different traditions all over the planet. Because this is, because this is just real and what's going on, there have been people in all places. The more you get in touch with this, the more that there emerges, the need to have a certain type of person who can look into that mirror, and, and read, interpret, communicate something of the meaning of the passing images, the interaction of images, the combinations and permutations of these fields. So in some sense, that's what a diviner is. Astrologers are diviners who look into this cosmic mirror. And the fields of images that are streaming across the quote, unquote, Mind of God, in order specifically to address people's questions, usually questions, my camera's having a hard time focusing again. Usually, these are questions that people have about mundane things, like, what's going to happen to my money? Or what's going to happen to you know, am I going to get married or something like that? And so, in astrologers response, when they look into the mandala, can be predictive, they can see themes and patterns, and based on those themes and patterns, they can offer a prognostication or a prediction. But that prognostication or a prediction is almost, it has a kind of power, you have to be very careful with it. It's not that uttering a prediction makes the thing happen.

Just being blunt here, when someone asks a really stupid question, it's hard not to give a very concrete predictive answer. When someone comes in and like, When am I going to get wealthy? You know, it's it, you can see like, Oh, they're cruisin for a bruisin and they've got this transit coming up. And it becomes very easy to see because the people, shamans, yogi's mystics, of all kinds who spend enough time looking into this mirror, have our eventually start to ask about the nature of the mirror itself. Why am I here? What is my relationship with the mirror? Right? They're not just looking into it for selfish gain, they're not just looking into it because of anxiety about outcomes. If you look into this thing, enough, you become more fascinated with why it's here and why you are here and what the relationship is between you and the mirror, why it exists in the first place, you start asking deeper questions, in other words, and I think it's just natural, I don't mean to like, speak down to anyone. It's just that before you get that sense that I'm not my mind, I'm not all of the things that happen because those things constantly come and go, they come into being and they go out of being nothing is permanent. You can't hold on to any of it. And you realise that often enough in an Ayahuasca ceremony as well, in a lot of different ways, you have those realisations and then you go like, Yeah, I mean, it's cool that you can prognosticate it with this tool, right? That it can offer predictive insight. And if someone asks a question about the future, look into the magical pool, see what streaming across it, and it will always reflect back something about the nature of that question, which can inherently then reflect something back about the trajectory of that question into the future. So that's what prognostication sort of is, you take a risk because there's also a creative power in the prognostication, right? So diviners have always been sort of trickster characters where there's a certain power they have if they don't have good intentions, or if they don't have the highest interest of this person in mind, who's asking a question or, you know, if they sort of, depending on their own attachments, and aversions and so forth, it's it's possible to do some damage by looking into the to the to the magical wishing pool and offering prognostications. But at the same time, astrology properly used is always giving people both prognostication and instruction, like going to see an Oracle usually results not so much in the ancient world in the Oracle giving you just a concrete answer, but it gives you an answer in a way that invites you to untangle the knot of your attachment to the outcome. And so it's a bit like, you know, the riddle of the sphinx or something like real diviners.

Like if you ever saw the show Vikings, I don't know if you guys have ever seen that show. I thought it was really fun. I liked it. But the in that show the shaman slash diviners, always answering questions about the future, but in a way that always gives people the ability if they think deeply about their motivations, their attachments, their aversions to take more conscious sort of control of that fate line. Like as soon as you ask a question, you're sort of admitting I'm in the hands of fate, the astrologer should then be able to address what's likely to happen along the faded line, while also offering some space for reflection such that the person has some different outcomes that are available. It's It's hard to describe what diviners like like shamans, diviners, you know, wise sages, wise women and men from all traditions, like do when they look into this mirror, and they don't have to use just the stars to look into it. It can be done through a tortoise shell, it can be can be done through the cards, it can be done through so many things, and I'll speak on that maybe in a little bit, too.

But anyway, back to the basic point, which is, I started realising that, that this this mirror of both the mind and the cosmos itself, that astrologers are people that are looking into that mirror in the fields of images and their combination, streaming across it in order to address questions, and hopefully in order to instruct and help people to, to live lives that are more spiritually enlightened, lighter, right let carrying less baggage, in sort of feeling more at home in creation in their existence, but sometimes that you know, that there's instruction in that just like in an Ayahuasca ceremony, sometimes the way that you come to release and unburden yourself, you know, of something is difficult, like sometimes it's, it's hard. So astrology is like this weird looking into that mind and offering like prognostications and instructions, and that came to me You know, again, probably along the first 30 sessions or so.

Number seven, it's very, very important. If we want astrology to be anything but a celestial gossip column that does nothing but enhance and increase and increase our neurosis attachments, disease, and, you know, identification with the mind which will drive us crazy, by the way that we ask, What am I looking into this mirror for whether it's my own mind or the planets in the mirror of the cosmos? Why am I looking into this? This is why astrologers in ancient world would often tell people before you went to see the Oracle to pray for a couple of days. And then you take a long pilgrimage oftentimes climb up a mountain to this cave where you'd see the Oracle. There's some sense of purifying your intention to understand, to humbly ask something and understanding very well your vested interest in the outcome or answer, opening your hands to receive divine instruction and guidance and maybe prognostications. But it's really important that the sages who use this technology, the people who go to the sages who use this technology, sometimes the sages use the technology to whoever is going to it, that they that they be asking actively, why am I doing this? Why am I looking into this mirror today? What am I hoping to gain from it? And it offers a kind of protection. It's as though that humble question starts drawing us into a relationship with the intelligence behind the Oracle and behind the, the Divinity whose thoughts are streaming through it, such that the questions we have are being addressed more personally, with more care, because we're addressing the intelligence with more care. And that is absolutely fundamental.

I realised this because I realised that approaching the Oracle is very similar to approaching Ayahuasca. When you drink a cup of ayahuasca, the shamans aren't just like, kick it back and have a fun time. You know, I mean, maybe if they're just making a joke or something, but what is your intention? Why are you drinking, it's not that you have to do something, approve something or get something but even just saying that prayer, like, I'm here to learn, I'm here to grow. I'm here to learn more about, you know, I don't know what I don't know, I'm here to learn about that. I'm, I'm here to try to understand something about this topic. But if that's not the thing to learn tonight, then okay. It's like it's it's something about that reverence for the intelligence that you're about to take into your mind and body that you're about to look into when you look at a birth chart, that is fundamental to having the best communication with it. Because the other thing, I realised this is eight, there's 10 total insights on my list today.

Number eight, people who look into the mirror with self interest only eventually lose themselves, they lose their mind, they lose sanity, they, if there is such a thing as fate, as karma, as you know, bad luck, as losing yourself, as you know, the the the going down the black hole, so to speak, it tends to be two things. One, we get identified with the mirror of the mind, or the mirror that is experience and the gods and the archetypal fields around us, we get identified with those things, we tend to lose ourselves. Two, it is when we look into those things, demanding that they give us information that is beneficial to our selfish motives, or our sense of what is right or wrong, which we have not even stopped to ask this higher intelligence about in the first place. Am I right in wanting these things? Am I right in thinking this is the direction to go? It all begins with Ayahuasca as with astrology, when we drop the self interest, the egoic self interest and think instead of, you know, I'm approaching a great intelligence and I'm approaching it as a student and I'm approaching it with the humble intention to learn and grow, understand myself better understand this intelligence better. Because the other thing I realised very early on with ayahuasca and these experiences and the insights that it was delivering to me about life and the cosmos and astrology and you know, the mind and so forth is that this mirror of both the mind and the cosmos is so beautiful. It can take you straight into the heart of divinity. But it's also, it's so dangerous. Because if you approach it with the desire to exploit it, that is the definition of alienation. That's why we have the archetypal experience of, you know, the Garden of Eden, you know, this is these are myths that are meant to go such myths are meant to point us toward what happens when we try to exploit divinity, which is essentially an exploitation of ourselves, that leaves us feeling completely lost, alone, alienated.

And so this mirror is beautiful. And, you know, it can take us straight into the heart of communion with the divine. At the same time, this mirror is dangerous, because if you don't have you know, if you're not sort of humble, and you don't go to it with some degree of, of humble desire to learn and grow, you can get torn apart by it. And the nice thing about this just to redeem it a little bit. And something that'll I have already planned in a future episode too, is that experience has a way of teaching us so even if you do get torn apart by it, the experiences are educational. And the nice thing is that it turns out that you're an eternal soul, that will trans, migrate the reborn and keep doing this, keep looking into the mind until you start asking what is its nature? And what is my nature and what is the relationship that I have with this world and with divinity itself and so forth. So, but I mean, it can get pretty dark. That's why pretty much all traditions, from Buddhism to Christianity and so forth, talk about heavens and hells, as realms and places that we can go to. So you have to be careful with why you're approaching. And, what you're up to. And this is one of the things that I feel like, I don't know, if people watch my channel, what I'm trying to get across is why I take the approach that I do these things were not these aren't just like ethical ideas that I'm just like, trying to be so puritanical about, these are things that, you know, came to me through long nights of like, you know, screaming and barfing and shitting my pants, sometimes, you know what I mean? And, and going through experiences that were also purifying, and that helped me understand like, this mirror of your mind of God and the cosmos and experience itself is so beautiful, but it's also so dangerous. And it can be a razor edge between the two sometimes, really, all that matters is you approach with a humble heart, a humble and open heart and mind.

So, anyway, finally, best questions to ask the mirror. Our humble requests to learn and go grow a relationship with the mirror is more important than any knowledge that may reveal I started realising over the course of the say, first 30 ceremonies, that learning astrology was going to, if I ever did learn to be good at it was going to come because I fell in love with the intelligence behind it. Not because I was mastering techniques, and not because I was really good at discerning answers in the field of intersecting images and themes and archetypes and so forth. It's not like getting good at an archetypal Sudoku game or something. It's about studying the patterns, studying the mind of God, studying my own mind reflecting upon it. And learning gradually, to replace the desire to be good at something with the desire to love, to love the intelligence behind all of this and within it, and to keep approaching it with a desire to learn. But more and more that was replaced for me and this is part of what led me to bhakti yoga.

I mean, this was this was something that was gradually being replaced the desire to know and learn astrology, with just falling in love with the intelligence that speaks astrology. And that if I just approach it, like, Hey, I love the way you talk. I want to think a thought well, you just say anything. I don't care what you say. Just say it because anything you say to me is mind blowing and amazing and I love it so much. So just keep talking please don't stop talking to me. Like that's the headspace that I feel like started growing in my heart. And that's the headspace with astrology that I don't think I could have gotten there, I don't know maybe I could have I just feel like Ayahuasca was so instrumental in helping me move beyond the desire to know astrology, to know the history of astrology to know the philosophy of astrology to know the techniques of astrology to be good at astrology. And instead it said, isn't it amazing when God talks in the language of astrology isn't your heart just blown every single time and it doesn't matter if it's smashed me God with you know, my Pluto transit annihilate me I don't care. Just give me the ability to see you speaking this amazing language while you're doing it. And I will shout amen. You don't know what I mean? Maybe there's something slightly masochistic about me, I don't know. But that's where I was coming from. And this is these this this forms the first thing that I wanted to say maybe future episodes won't be quite as long I'm going close to an hour now.

But the first insight was that reality is archetypal. Experience is archetypal. And astrology is it's like learning a language that's fundamental to existing and there's so many ways to learn it. Some people do it through art. Some people do it through Tarot. Some people do it. I mean, I feel like it's not just astrology, right? It's, it's, it's finding that way of understanding archetypes and understanding the divinity that speaks in this language of archetypes, and just falling in love with talking to that presence. So alright, that's what I've got to say for today. I hope you guys enjoyed this. This first episode has been a little meandering, and I promise I will get better as it goes on. I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments as you were maybe inspired or to share your own thoughts or your own insights about your own journey with astrology and how you've, you know how you've come to understand it or you know, live it. Love to hear those thoughts. I've got like I said, I literally made a list of like, about 60 plus different really, particular insights. This one is maybe one of the most sort of big picture, but there's lots of like really specific things that I can't wait to share with you guys. So I'm really looking forward to this series felt like a good time to kick it off as Jupiter is conjoining Neptune. Tell me how you liked it. Remember, if you like this programme, like subscribe, share your comments. If you want to receive notifications when I go live. click the notification bell and I will see you all again tomorrow. Take it easy, everyone. Bye.