Letting Go in Faith and Love: a Powerful Birth Chart Story

Transcript:

0:00
Hi everyone, this is Acyuta-bhava from Nightlight Astrology. Happy Thursday, everybody. Today for the first time in a long time we are going to take a look at a birth chart, this birth chart has a couple of things that I want to teach everybody technically, for those of you who are studying astrology at home, I think it's really useful to have this kind of workshopping of a chart from from time to time. And then also, there's a much, much deeper philosophical and spiritual lessons to be learned from this the interaction that I had with this client. So this is a longtime client of mine who has allowed me to use her chart. So we will put it up on the screen and take a look. And remember, I like to let people know that I do this, because when I was studying astrology, there was a tonne of theory, technique, philosophy, mythology, psychology, you know, it's all out there. But there was very little workshopping of charts and stories from people's lives that was freely and widely accessible. So I try to make that possible. And I'll try to make all my programmes really accessible for people financially as well, so that studying astrology is easier. At the same time, a big part of my first year programme, the next one begins in June, I'll start advertising that, starting next month in March. But the last third of that programme 30 classes two to three hours each, a year long course 12 guest lectures, stuff like that. So it's it's a very deep dive into ancient astrology. The last third of that course, we bring people into the classroom, to actually practice and see live readings. This is really important. So I know everyone doesn't have the time or energy or finances, even with the different need based tuitions that I offer to take a class. So once in a while, I'd like to try to provide this for everybody out there who's studying on your own, I know what it's like to be in that position. So hopefully you find this useful. Alright, so here's the chart we're looking at today, we're going to call this chart anonymous.

2:12
So at any rate, three things that are important to do when looking at a chart, one is going to be to gather the biggest themes. And sometimes charts are really tightly organised like this one. And it's not so hard to gather the themes. Other times it's more complex, but you want to look and just see what stands out what what the medically or topically looks like it's at the centre of this person's life, we're looking at a karmic field, which is pointing us to where the focus will be. That means that a whole bunch of planets and certain houses are going to feature those topics more than other topics, typically speaking. So you get this feeling of what's being emphasised now everything's spread around the chart, there's other ways that we have of looking for what's being highlighted, for example, angular planets, or exalted planets, or planets in their rulership, or, you know, the the Sun, the Moon, or the rising sign right. In this chart, the major themes that stand out when you're looking at this chart are pretty obvious. We have both malefics debilitated in the fourth house of home family, family karma, land living environment. And then we have another stellium over here in the seventh place of marriage. It's interesting to note that we have a fallen Venus in the sixth house as well. And that'll come in a little bit later. But so you know, when I'm taking notes, here's what I'm going to do. And I'll just write this into the centre. So you can see my note taking process.

3:43
I'm going to look and I'm going to say, Okay, it looks like marriage. And it looks like family. Pretty easy, right? And then I might sort of put families / ancestry, living environment, kind of expand that fourth house a little bit, and marriage, and then you could you could also say, relationships, or social life, etc. So I got I just get this feeling for which themes are going to be really prevalent right away, based on the fact that we have both the sun and the moon in the seventh house. I'm going to focus on that for starters. So the way that I would summarise this, very briefly would be that this person is going to be exploring the importance of relationships in this lifetime, marriage, union with others. And of course, what comes along with that when you're an Aries rising, and you've got a big stellium in Libra in the seventh house is the split between, you know, how independent am I versus, you know, how much do I rely on or am I defined by my relationships, sometimes the Aries rising and all of that Libra energy in the seventh house, the mission is to join more deeply with others. Right and And that might not be easy, it looks like it should be easy because there's a bunch of planets there. But just because there's a bunch of planets there doesn't mean it will be easy, it could actually mean that it will be difficult. You have to look at the the context, the full and total context of the chart, right? For example, in this chart, we could say that, this person with an abundance of planets in that sign. But with Venus debilitated as the host of all of those planets in the seventh house in the sixth house, which is a place of conflict, that there might be real conflicts around relationships. And so I can't just take it for granted like, Oh, yeah, well, this person is just going to be totally a relationship person. And, you know, that's it. No, it could be that they're learning how to become one. And it's very difficult, or the opposite extreme, which is that they, of course, which you might more readily predict, they might tend to rely on or be overly defined by relationships, in which case, maybe their Ascendant, Aries is more the place that's left out, could this person have issues with codependency? Yeah, we can see that as well. Either they're learning how to be more dependent, or they have troubles with it. But those are probably the two biggest and most obvious options. And either way, there probably will be a degree of conflict surrounding it. Because the host or what we call the dispositor of all those planets in the seventh house, is a debilitated Venus in the sixth place, which was called the place of misfortune, the joy of Mars god of strife. So you do have what looks like, you know, debilitated Venus in that house can point to challenges around, you know, the relationships or love. Okay, so that's kind of how I take a chart and I'm using this chart example is kind of like cheating, almost, because it's so nicely organised. So it's a good example chart.

7:03
Then we have this stellium in the fourth house. And I could also say that there's going to be a very heavy emphasis on, on family, and on the living environment, maybe on children or, again, the theme of marriage could even come up here. So you're getting kind of the family and marriage vibe from this chart big time. But with Mars in its fall, and Saturn in its detriment in this house, we can see that there's going to be some problems, there's going to be some challenges around this area of life. This language, as I've been saying for many years now, this language of detriment, exile, it's like all these all these terms, those are for the practitioner. So everything is so democratised today in astrology, that like sort of like everyone is a student, you know, and every everyone is like, kind of people, if you're interested in astrology, then it's almost like there's no sense in some ways, there's kind of an artificial distinction between the actual professional astrologer and the average novice student of astrology. So the craft language is sort of shared by everyone. And that can be problematic because, you don't need to use the words like detriment or fall or, you know, whatever, you know, reading with someone, it's just tipping us off as practitioners to know what's going on in a chart. So this is something I've been teaching my students to be sensitive about for many years now. And one thing that I'll say here is that you have one thing that's important to note is that we also have Mars and Saturn in what is called a superior square, that aspect between Cancer, and Libra goes out from these planets right hand side. So if you're looking into the centre of the chart from the perspective of Mars and Saturn, the rays of Mars and Saturn go to the right hand side, and that's called the superior aspect. So these malefic planets, meaning they tend to bring more challenging energies or events or themes karmically speaking, they are overwhelming the planets in the house of marriage.

9:13
So there's, there's something here about home, family, karma, difficulties around the roots, living environment that is going to potentially overcome these topics of marriage, or you don't even have to include the house topics of the fourth, you can just say, Mars and Saturn are going to sort of overtake or impress that they're heavier, more difficult qualities on the topic of marriage. So we have a couple of things to make us think that marriage is a big deal. And when a benefic is in a difficult house and it's debilitated it's almost like a functional malefic and then when you have to malefics in bad shape. overcoming all that stellium, you know, like, okay, there's some really heavy stuff that's going to overcome marriage here. So I spoke with this client for many years, almost 10, in fact, so let me summarise the gist of what she came in to talk about. And the big, the most important thing that she came in to talk about was the passing of her husband. So she had been married very young, had kids. She had four or five kids or something like that. But at any rate, after having children, she lost her husband, at an early age due to health complications that were, you know, way too young, if he was in his 40s or 50s, or something like that. So her question was, essentially, what, what is my destiny after the death of my husband, because I feel like I don't have anything. Like she just was so crushed, and so deeply devastated. And so deeply missing him, and feeling confused about who she is, without him. And this is something that we talked about, literally for years, once a year, we would talk and every year, it was the same, the same inherent struggle that she was going through. So how do we see that reflected in this chart? Well, we see the malefics, overcoming, again, these planets in the house of marriage. And then we see the dispositor of all of those planets in the house of marriage, Venus debilitated in the sixth house of illness and disease and strife. So there's real hardship around marriage. Now, this is someone who also admittedly, in our conversations said, I just haven't learned who I am without this partner. So this became a core focus of adult life after an early and unexpected death of husband.

12:05
Now, at the same time, she did have one child who had some special needs. And so earlier in her life, she was also dealing with the difficulty of a child's health to put it just broadly speaking. And so there's a few other things in her life that really fit the bill in terms of the difficulties around home and family. In the home and family environment, a high needs child, I guess, is the remember, that's the phrase that she used, but like a, like a special needs or high needs child, it took a lot of work and a lot of care and attention. So at any rate, so then husband dies young. And the question is what what do I do next with my life. So one of the things that we worked on for a long time was, she said, I feel like my life purpose was my partner. I feel like that was what I was supposed to do was supposed to be, you know, a wife and a mom. And you know, kids are out of the house now. One of my children is an adult now that has the special needs, and he's becoming more independent. And it's like, I don't know where I'm needed. And I don't know who I am, right? Well, one of the things that she knew she needed to do was she knew that she needed to sell the house. And this was hard for her because, of course, this was the house that she shared with her husband and her children and her family. And it was too big and too much to manage for her. So she was having she was having a really, really hard time letting go of it. Extremely difficult. And one of the things that every year I would tell her was, you know, hitting this person was a person of faith as well. So this was someone who had a faith life. And I said, you know, one of the things that you're you're perhaps that you're not thinking of is that you can't figure out who you are, you maybe you, you can't fully walk into the next phase of your life until you let go of the past a little bit more. And you know, to say that you want to sell the house, you say that, you know that it's the next thing that you need to do, so maybe that's where to place your faith, because one of the things that she talked about a lot was I don't get why I don't get why God would do this to me. You know, it's like, well, I don't either, first of all, but is your faith that that the divine can lead you to the next step in life? And if you know that that next step involves letting go of the past, then, can you do it? Can you step out in faith and do it?

14:46
So the last session that I had with her, she told me that she finally did it. She sold her house. And she was so deeply happy about it. And then not long after less than a year, I believe it was, I got news from her children, one of her children who knew that she loved talking to me and so forth. And I got a message saying that she died. So she sold the house moved out. And then very shortly after she passed, and I sat with that for a long time, you know, because the first instinct I had was no, like, she did it like she, she took the next step. So wasn't there supposed to be this big next stage of unfolding of finding out who she was of, meeting new friends, maybe dating someone new, like who knows, right. But like I, she had told me that she was selling the house, or she just sold it. And I was so excited for her and she was so excited. And then boom, she was gone. So this is the realisation that I had, that I share with all of you in the same way that I share with my students in my programmes. When we work with people, we get to see the way that karma plays out. And it plays out in many different ways. I've seen stories where similar things have happened, and a person will go on to sort of explore the new version of themselves and a new stage of life. And maybe that's some somehow their destiny path. But here's the thing is that people, always with astrology think that we're here to do something. I'm here to do something. I'm here to become someone. I'm here to accomplish something. And more often than any question that I get, I get the one that says What am I supposed to do? And when I think about this woman's life, and what she was supposed to do, and what she did, it was to surrender in faith, and to do what she knew in her heart, that the divine was asking her to do in this case, to move out in faith into her life. In the direction that that internal compass was pointing her. And you know what, she never really got to taste the results of that. And this is the important point. Because sometimes, most of the time, the results aren't what matter. It's the blossoming of faith in the heart that says, I trust, I surrender, I let go, I'm letting go of the house, I'm letting go of the past. I'm trusting you, God, I'm trusting you universe. And I'm moving in faith. That's what I'm going to do.

17:53
Isn't it beautiful to think that she did that? And then it was like, boom, she's gone. I actually think that's so beautiful, the more I have sat with it, since she passed, that I'll never forget her voice. The last time that I spoke with her, she was crying. And she was saying to me, it doesn't matter what comes next, I just know that I have to trust God and let go. And she did. And boom, off ramp, who knows where she's going. But I have a feeling that it's, it was very, very good place. So what she said, I have to move, I have to go forward with faith and love and trust in God in the universe. And I just have to let go and I have to do this. So what is faith in love? And why is it the actual goal of our life more than anything that a chart says you're supposed to do? You need to go and be independent, you need to go and live a life outside of the marriage that defined your earlier years and that devastated you know, devastated you and your husband passed. But you need to be able to let go of that and step into a you that's new and less dependent. And that has a nice high sort of Hollywood flavour to it. But what I love about her story is that she made the choice and the choice, not what came of it was all that mattered. I can't forget her voice crying, saying I just have to let go of this house. And then when she finally did let go of it saying it doesn't matter what comes next I just have to let go. I have to trust God and let go and see what comes after this. What is faith and love? It's three things that we say in bhakti. And this is something that I see every day in my astrology practice. It confirms within my heart the feeling that Bhakti, the Bhakti yoga path is real, not just in a Eastern sense. It's all over the world in so many different traditions.

19:51
What is faith in love? Faith and love means surrendering beyond goodness. Which means if I do the good thing then something good will happen. No, we don't know what will happen. We don't even maybe even care what will happen. We just have to surrender and faith in love. It goes beyond growth, surrender, goes beyond growth, when we surrender into in faith in love, it goes beyond Well, I know that if I do this, I'm going to grow. And then I'll get there's some result that I'll get. I had this amazing feeling after she passed. That was like, that's it. You know, when you're growing up in the Christian church, there's altar calls, you know, people occasionally get to decide to give their life to Jesus. So they'll come up, they'll say a prayer, there'll be anointed whatever the case might be. And, but life is an altar call, you know what I mean? Like, there's choices that we make to surrender our hearts to the divine, and to spirit. And so the idea that I better surrender, because that means I'll take the next step forward up this arduous merit based mountain of spiritual accomplishment. No, I'd love thinking, that that simple choice, I don't know what's coming next. I'm so afraid. I'm so attached to my husband and the past in this house, I've got to let it go. I've got to trust I've got to have faith, I don't care what comes next. I just know I've got to do this. Boom, hey, then I just pictured that soul ascending into the spiritual dimension of reality, singing in a heavenly rock choir somewhere. Like, yeah, that's it. That's all you need. That's all you need is faith and surrender, without any attachment to what comes of your goodness, or what growth happens next? I mean, is there any other explanation for why people say words like hallelujah? Isn't hallelujah, essentially, about going beyond being good? Or beyond growing and faith? Isn't it just the irrational elation of love and faith and surrender in the soul? Isn't that what it is? And everyone has a different word for it, say Hare Krishna, you know, in the bhakti tradition, so many different things that we use to just express the joy, the unadulterated joy of letting go and saying, love I choose you today in faith, and not without it without any guarantee of where it leads me. And then there's surrender beyond knowledge. Surrender beyond knowledge means, I don't know how or why it is reasonable. I can't circumscribe the choice to surrender and faith in love with my mind. I can always find some justification to not do so some argument against it. Right? So it's sort of transrational, you just say it's surrender to faith and love goes beyond being good. It goes beyond growing, and it goes beyond knowledge. And it certainly goes beyond this idea that we're here to do something. No, we're here to be something in faith and love. And it can be one decision, that boom, takes us up. And I have a deep feeling that that's what happened to this woman. I don't know. But I can't I can't stress this enough that the last time I talked to her, hearing her cry, talking about from the previous session, I've got to get rid of this house. To the final session, I spoke with her, I've done it, I have no idea what comes next. I don't need to know I just know that I had to surrender to God and trust. Boom.

23:36
So I don't know that astrology can work really deeply work in our lives unless it is accompanied by this kind of faith and surrender as a practice in everyday life. So in bhakti, we say as in many other faith practices, and different valences you know, all over the world we take time daily to do this because we know that is the preparation for our spiritual life. We know that the health, wealth and destination of our spirit soul is found in the ability to die into humility and love beyond goodness, beyond growth and beyond knowledge every day, even if it just for five or 10 minutes, we just throw up a few hallelujah's, fall back on the bed with your hands open and go, I don't know. I don't care. I can't figure it out. It's hallelujah. Right. And when we take time to commune in that space, that's that's what we're here to do. Right? And we're here to do that always in relation to the dimensions of karma that our chart points out, but that's it. That's the mission. And this woman provides an example of someone who I think did it. I think she accomplished the mission of her chart, in a sense, but it wasn't found in anything that came as a result, she didn't even get to see the result. So there's one step that was really important that she needed to take. And it wasn't about becoming my own person as opposed to being overly dependent on my spouse. It was about letting go in faith and love and trust. There it is. That's what we all need to do in my humble opinion. That's what I try to talk to all of my clients about every day. But it's very helpful to know what areas of life where we might have to work on that surrender that faith and that trust, because we all have different classrooms and sort of different curriculum when it comes to the places where we might have a really hard time trusting and surrendering.

25:33
Anyway, so I thought you guys would find this interesting today. I hope that you have a beautiful Thursday, I hope that this chart session was uplifting and interesting. I send up just prayers and gratitude for who consider this very saintly person. And the example that she set in that moment in her life. I felt like as a practitioner, when I heard that she passed, I thought, you know, I know other astrologers feel this way too, but you just get you give. You give a lot to your clients, you hope you are anyway. And then things like this happen and you realise like you're getting so much more than you could possibly give. That's a real thing. It doesn't happen every day, but you get that feeling sometimes and it's real. So I hope that you feel that same way after hearing the story today and that it also helps sharpen some of your charts skills. All right, have a good Thursday everybody. Take it easy. Bye.