Alright. Let’s go for it. Let’s throw a big Mars/Pluto rock into the water today.
When Mars and Pluto come into a square with each other, and Mars is in the sign of the balance, there is an opportunity to embrace what appear to be contradictions and allow the tension of these apparent contradictions to work on the soul…it’s never easy to do this, but it is always good for the soul, who is turned off by pat answers and overly simplistic notions of right and wrong…what is soulful is complex, deep, rich, and brimming with the tension and relaxation of opposites. The soul is the middle ground, the holding place of all experiences, and the ever-present witness…the faithful friend, ever listening.
Here are a few contradictions worth exploring right now…and please do not take these words too literally, or as indications of my own committed views or beliefs. I write this post today specifically to push the “Mars/Pluto” envelope that we see in the sky right now, for the sake of exploring what is deep, controversial, charged, and taboo within ourselves and the soul of the world at this hour.
These voices are here too…consider:
* For as much as we might like to think that social change or progress is happening, we should also consider that the shadow of these “progressive” moral awakenings is a culture of blame, materialistically-based victimization and/or empowerment rather than spiritual healing and spiritual empowerment, popular and selective outrage, and trendy activism that is ultimately as egotistical and consumerist as anything else.
Ouch, right? That’s not comfortable. Really not liking that!
How about this one…
* For as much as we think that men should change, or will change, thanks to this new call to action in the collective, we will not likely see a major change but rather more secretiveness and repression of these exact masculine qualities, which will end up creating more complicated issues and even more complex layers of social/sexual violence, because at the end of the day we are animals, as much as we might be capable of displaying elevated states of rational intelligence or awareness or even moral reform. And after all, we are living in the Kali-yuga (or something like it), and this is a sinking ship. It’s not going to get better, it’s going to get worse. What looks like material progress within these political/social/cultural upheavals is actually only the intensification of material power struggles that are first and foremost archetypal and therefore without end in the material world, whose final destiny is material death. Even the cosmos will die.
Also, not a fun, bright, beautiful set of ideas, and yet these ideas exist. They exist just like trees and stars and people and plants and all the other things that exist and continually compete with other ideas about the way things are.
More:
* It’s possible for a good cause to be co-opted by bad people. It’s possible for all different kinds of “good” causes to also have both intentional and unintentional “bad” effects or outcomes. It’s possible for someone to be both a real victim and to suffer from a victim complex. It’s possible for someone to be blamed or called out AND forgiven. It’s possible for someone to be forgiven and not blamed or called out. It’s possible for someone to be empowered while also being a victim. It’s possible to never know ultimately which is called for, and it’s possible to know precisely, at certain times, when one is called for over the other. It’s possible for someone to be a victim and never need any empowering. It’s possible for a good cause to be nothing more than self-righteousness, and it’s possible for a bad cause to accidentally or intentionally do wonderful things.
Why is it possible? Because it happens all the time!! Are we really so blind? Are we really the authors of everything? Are we the scriptwriters, and is our moral imagination the measure of all things?
Again:
* It’s possible to gain more spiritually from hardship and being a victim than from being born into any form of material power. It’s possible for the reverse to happen. It’s possible that our skin color, gender, or socio-economic status, emphasized, is only deepening divisions, and it’s possible that focusing on skin color, gender, socio-economic status, or anything else, creates deeper spiritual AND material equality among all people, regardless of background.
* It’s possible that we’re trying to legislate or coerce people into moral behavior through shaming, and it’s possible that we’re holding people accountable. It’s possible for some blend of both to be happening at once.
* Ultimate material equality may also not be possible. Do we dare even utter that? Why are we so afraid of this idea? Isn’t it possible to do good, with full compassion and hope in our hearts, while knowing the ship is sinking? Regardless of whether it is or isn’t sinking, isn’t it safe to say that people can do good in the world without caring so much about the results, or at least the final results or any commitment to the ideas of spiritual or evolutionary progress?
I have had the joy and deep trouble of having to contemplate these things over and over again in my life, and I suspect others have too. Usually, people who contemplate these kinds of subversive ideas long enough, seriously enough, from the dark ground of their lived experiences and observations, will soon enough find an inner garden of silence growing wilder and wilder each day. This garden is exotic, filled with colors we usually don’t have words for, and, at least for today’s Mars/Pluto forecast, I’ll dare to say that it is the place of the soul…the soul whose marginal contemplations are always a safe place and a treasured secret.
Prayer: Help us to be the hidden, dark observers for as often as we are such brilliant, angel-colored truth sayers.
When Mars and Pluto come into a square with each other, and Mars is in the sign of the balance, there is an opportunity to embrace what appear to be contradictions and allow the tension of these apparent contradictions to work on the soul…it’s never easy to do this, but it is always good for the soul, who is turned off by pat answers and overly simplistic notions of right and wrong…what is soulful is complex, deep, rich, and brimming with the tension and relaxation of opposites. The soul is the middle ground, the holding place of all experiences, and the ever-present witness…the faithful friend, ever listening.
Here are a few contradictions worth exploring right now…and please do not take these words too literally, or as indications of my own committed views or beliefs. I write this post today specifically to push the “Mars/Pluto” envelope that we see in the sky right now, for the sake of exploring what is deep, controversial, charged, and taboo within ourselves and the soul of the world at this hour.
These voices are here too…consider:
* For as much as we might like to think that social change or progress is happening, we should also consider that the shadow of these “progressive” moral awakenings is a culture of blame, materialistically-based victimization and/or empowerment rather than spiritual healing and spiritual empowerment, popular and selective outrage, and trendy activism that is ultimately as egotistical and consumerist as anything else.
Ouch, right? That’s not comfortable. Really not liking that!
How about this one…
* For as much as we think that men should change, or will change, thanks to this new call to action in the collective, we will not likely see a major change but rather more secretiveness and repression of these exact masculine qualities, which will end up creating more complicated issues and even more complex layers of social/sexual violence, because at the end of the day we are animals, as much as we might be capable of displaying elevated states of rational intelligence or awareness or even moral reform. And after all, we are living in the Kali-yuga (or something like it), and this is a sinking ship. It’s not going to get better, it’s going to get worse. What looks like material progress within these political/social/cultural upheavals is actually only the intensification of material power struggles that are first and foremost archetypal and therefore without end in the material world, whose final destiny is material death. Even the cosmos will die.
Also, not a fun, bright, beautiful set of ideas, and yet these ideas exist. They exist just like trees and stars and people and plants and all the other things that exist and continually compete with other ideas about the way things are.
More:
* It’s possible for a good cause to be co-opted by bad people. It’s possible for all different kinds of “good” causes to also have both intentional and unintentional “bad” effects or outcomes. It’s possible for someone to be both a real victim and to suffer from a victim complex. It’s possible for someone to be blamed or called out AND forgiven. It’s possible for someone to be forgiven and not blamed or called out. It’s possible for someone to be empowered while also being a victim. It’s possible to never know ultimately which is called for, and it’s possible to know precisely, at certain times, when one is called for over the other. It’s possible for someone to be a victim and never need any empowering. It’s possible for a good cause to be nothing more than self-righteousness, and it’s possible for a bad cause to accidentally or intentionally do wonderful things.
Why is it possible? Because it happens all the time!! Are we really so blind? Are we really the authors of everything? Are we the scriptwriters, and is our moral imagination the measure of all things?
Again:
* It’s possible to gain more spiritually from hardship and being a victim than from being born into any form of material power. It’s possible for the reverse to happen. It’s possible that our skin color, gender, or socio-economic status, emphasized, is only deepening divisions, and it’s possible that focusing on skin color, gender, socio-economic status, or anything else, creates deeper spiritual AND material equality among all people, regardless of background.
* It’s possible that we’re trying to legislate or coerce people into moral behavior through shaming, and it’s possible that we’re holding people accountable. It’s possible for some blend of both to be happening at once.
* Ultimate material equality may also not be possible. Do we dare even utter that? Why are we so afraid of this idea? Isn’t it possible to do good, with full compassion and hope in our hearts, while knowing the ship is sinking? Regardless of whether it is or isn’t sinking, isn’t it safe to say that people can do good in the world without caring so much about the results, or at least the final results or any commitment to the ideas of spiritual or evolutionary progress?
I have had the joy and deep trouble of having to contemplate these things over and over again in my life, and I suspect others have too. Usually, people who contemplate these kinds of subversive ideas long enough, seriously enough, from the dark ground of their lived experiences and observations, will soon enough find an inner garden of silence growing wilder and wilder each day. This garden is exotic, filled with colors we usually don’t have words for, and, at least for today’s Mars/Pluto forecast, I’ll dare to say that it is the place of the soul…the soul whose marginal contemplations are always a safe place and a treasured secret.
Prayer: Help us to be the hidden, dark observers for as often as we are such brilliant, angel-colored truth sayers.
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