Mercury and Jupiter Opposed in Mutual Reception: Two Things Can be True

Adam Elenbaas
Adam. Hey everyone. This is Adam Ellenbaas from Nightlight astrology. Happy Monday, everybody. Today, we are going to start the week off by looking at Mercury's opposition to Jupiter, which will be forming over most of the month of November, with mercury in Jupiter sign and Jupiter in mercury sign. This is a really interesting period of time, because we have an opposition and a mutual reception between the two planets at the same time, with mercury turning retrograde near the end of the month, and then engaging with Jupiter again in retrograde motion, and then after stationing to turn direct, once more, Mercury will move through the opposition to Jupiter.

So I'm going to lay out the timeline for you, and we are going to engage in a kind of philosophical meditation on what this planetary combination means, mercury, opposite Jupiter, with mutual reception and a long period of time in which we'll be working with that opposition. So I hope you'll find this useful. Before we get into it as always, remember to like and subscribe. We're trying to get to 80,000 subscribers on the channel by the spring equinox. That's our goal. Of course, that's Fall Equinox.

If you're in the southern hemisphere. It's free to subscribe. It really helps us grow our channel and our community. If you watch regularly and you haven't yet done so, we really appreciate it. Transcripts of any of these daily talks can be found on my website, which is Nightlight astrology.com, I'm going to take you over there right now, because we are approaching a couple of things happening at Nightlight. Go to the events tab, click on live Talks.

My talk on November 21 is coming up. I do a monthly webinar each month. This one is Pluto into Aquarius. Ai aliens and new world orders. We're going to be looking at Pluto in Aquarius. And what we can expect, expect both collectively and personally, from this transit. This is one of the only spaces that I talk about mundane astrology, and by the way, so you might find that interesting. It's not something I usually cover on my channel. The other thing coming up, of course, is our first year program, ancient astrology for the modern mystic, begins November 16. You can still register.

We have need based tuition available. If you go down to the bottom of the page, you'll find the tuition assistance option is there for people who might need a little bit of help if you're someone struggling financially, or you're on a fixed or limited income, and you could use a little bit of help to make the program happen. We are very glad to offer need based tuition for all of our programs.

One of our visions is to make sure that astrological education is accessible for people of all income levels and financial circumstances, so you can still our sale is has passed, but you still have some options for payments, and the need based tuition is still open. We hope to see some of you in class soon, if you stick around after. I'm done today, there's an informational video about the upcoming program that's tagged on to the end so you can learn more about what the program includes and what the full year of an immersion into Hellenistic astrology looks like at Nightlight.

So hope to see you there. It's a great election Pluto moving into Aquarius as we start the program, is a fantastic election under which to study and enter into apprenticeship mode with astrology. So yeah, hope to see some of you there soon. All right, so on that note, let's turn our attention to the real time clock and this interesting transit of Mercury and Jupiter that will be unfolding, and I wanted to look at it today, because I think at the beginning of a week in which we are entering into a very charged political period here in the United States, anyway, a big election with a lot of you know, people get really worked up.

Understandably, there's a lot at stake, and there's a feeling of division that's very ripe during this period of time in US politics, at least in recent history. And it's interesting, we have, like a kind of a two party system for the most part here in the US. So you have two people. Are you on the left? Are you on the right? Are you a Republican? Are you a Democrat? And I was thinking about this, and I thought, you know, it's really interesting that we're coming into the election as Mercury and Jupiter are opposing one another. And I'm not going to speak about the election astrologically, but I am going to speak about the idea of polarity, polarization, dualities, and what feel like irreconcilable opposites in the psyche. How do we deal with those things while still honoring and maintaining our convictions? For example, this is a great question for something like mercury opposite Jupiter.

Now let's take a look at the timeline. Here. Mercury is now in Jupiter's sign, while Jupiter is in mercury sign. The two are mutually applying to one another, because Jupiter is retrograde. And if we just take this wheel forward a little bit, we're going to see that the intensification of this opposition happens as the month goes on, with mercury coming through the exact opposition between november 17 and 18th. And then what will happen is, on the 25th mercury will station and turn retrograde, and then mercury, through its retrogradation, will oppose Jupiter, once more.

That opposition will happen right around December 4, by the way, right around the same time Mars is about to turn retrograde, and then mercury will station and turn direct. And that will happen right around December 16 and. Then Mercury's forward motion will carry it into an opposition with Jupiter right about the day after Christmas, December 26 into the 27th during that entire period of time, Mercury and Jupiter are looking at each other from opposite signs, and they are in each other signs. An oppositional relationship with mutual reception is a very peculiar and interesting condition for these planets to be in. So what I want to do is I want to talk a little bit about the fact that we're going to be dealing with this all the way through, basically the end of the year. It's coming at a time where I think the potential for polarization is in the air. And yet, I think for those of us who are trying to figure out how to be loving human beings, who are compassionate, who are always in a spiritual sense, learning and trying to hold the tension of the opposites, how can we work with feelings of polarization within ourselves.

How can we carry the cross of a polarizing moment in time? And maybe some people will be experiencing that with respect to the politics or the current events more than other people, but regardless of the political situation, the fact that these two planets are opposite, but in mutual reception for the remainder of the year also speaks to the potential for any kind and all kinds of polarization, intellectually, philosophically, spiritually, morally, to come up within us, and how do we work with that? So that's kind of where I'm going.

That's where that is where I'm going with today's talk and the way I organized it, and what I thought it would be interesting to speak about before I get into I've got 10 things that I want to talk about today, a list of 10 that's double your normal list. So lucky you. But before I get into it, Mercury is a planet that was associated with the deconstructing, rational mind, which is not to say that mercury isn't mystical or philosophical, but Mercury is changeable, and likes to take things apart and put them back together. Mercury likes peculiar, riddling, curious bits of information.

Mercury is the psycho pump who can go down into the underworld and back out, can traverse both worlds. Is fluid across the spectrum and spectrum in terms of gender and in terms of the yin and yang classifications of ancient astrology, mercury can change like a shape shifter. And so Mercury is a truly unique planet that has this relation with the deconstructive, analytical, questioning, riddling mind. Not surprisingly, the entire Science of Astrology was attributed to Hermes Mercury, the Roman name for the Greek god. So Hermes is the progenitor of this science of the stars, and the science of the stars is very hermetic insofar as it is an interconnected mandala. And any piece that you try to put together cannot be put together without understanding some other part of the puzzle.

And so in a weird way, you have to deconstruct and sort of reverse engineer your way through different facets of the language to understand other facets of the language. And that's something that is always happening for astrologers, and the astrologer, in a Hermes like way, should always remain curious and never feel like they've arrived at a complete or total understanding of anything, not a house, not a sign, not a planet. So in this way, the the hermeneutic Act is an ongoing act of interpretation and communication, and this is the role that Hermes plays in our lives, philosophically and spiritually. So we can't just say that mercury is the rational mind. It's not that simple.

Now, on the other hand, Jupiter is a God that also has a great association with things like philosophy, knowledge and wisdom, sages, professors, teachers. Jupiter is a little bit different in so far as Jupiter is something like the total systemic unity of

Adam Elenbaas
a form of thought, like a philosophical system or the system of astrology, or the doctrines of the church or the dogmas of the church, or the values and the ways in which the values are codified to create a legal system or a form of government. So Jupiter is representing forms of knowledge that have institutionalized in a way, or that have been passed down in some kind of oral tradition, like even gurus teaching the way they've been taught over and over, down lineages like that. Could be very jupiterian, but the idea is that sense of cohesion and unity of a systematized or systematic approach that's sort of whole and complete, ideally a university is that sense of wholeness universal, and the process of education is one of interconnecting many different disciplines to have a sense of understanding about the world. This is the idea of a liberal arts education in some ideal sense. We all know that college educations are not everything in the world that we were once told they were. They also put you in a lot of debt. So anyway, but the idea here is that Jupiter is very different. You could say that Jupiter is like the formalized collection of Platonic teachings, whereas Mercury is much more like the incessant questioning of Socrates. You know, the two are inseparable, because Plato and Socrates are inseparable in the history of Greek philosophy, for example, and yet they play very different roles. Socrates doesn't codify anything really, but he deconstructs and riddles and finds his way to truth through a kind of path of negation. It's not this, it's not that. And by somehow emptying ourselves of certainty, deconstructing things, we come into a wisdom that's formed through humility and curiosity and open mindedness and a kind of analytical deconstructiveness. And that's Hermes gift to us. It's as though the entire system of astrology helps us to pour out all of the empty certainties that we have about the world that initially we think are so full, we find out they're they're really not that full, whereas Jupiter represents those, those that sense that there is a fullness, like I live with a strange paradox in my life as an astrologer, where, on the one hand, I have a system of knowledge passed on for 1000s of years with craft and philosophical consistencies that are just brilliant and give me the sense of belonging to something like, almost like a faith community. All of you are part of my faith community. You know, all of us that share this language and this sort of system and tradition, we have something Jupiter, like a school that we belong to in another sense, you know, in a kind of Hermes, like way, my day to day life as an astrologer is constantly Almost like unbinding me from the certainties I have about myself in the universe, and doing so through this kind of penetrating and reflective, deconstructing process. It's like when you can see a transit and its expression in five or six different ways, because it's multivalent, and it allows you to kind of deconstruct one particular judgment that I've had about an experience. I have this judgment about an experience that I had at work or with my family or my wife or my kids or my friends or with the world, and I've this is what I'm thinking about it, and then a transit comes along and allows me to think about the same thing from multiple different vantage points. That's Hermes, and it deconstructs and I'm free from the prison of my own certainty. What a relief there's Hermes, on the other hand, one when I'm sitting here talking about astrology as something we can all access that has this feature that allows us to do this. There's a way in which it's Jupiter and see they're like two sides of the same coin. And when Jupiter is in a Hermes ruled sign, Jupiter is, in a sense, building cohesion through negation, building cohesion through deconstruction, building things through a process of taking them apart and putting them back together. You could even say and Mercury in Sagittarius is in some ways doing the same thing, where Mercury will normally take things apart, but the taking apart is building something up. And this is also what's meant by the fact that the two planets in each other's signs at the same time have a kind of beneficial connection for each other. But what's interesting is that beneficial connection, working on each other's behalf in each other's signs, you can build things and take things apart in very constructive ways, in either direction. So the constructiveness is Jupiter, the deconstructiveness is mercury. And you can go in either direction, and something can come from it, something useful, whether it's an emptying or a filling, there's something at work between these two planets that allows us to shift the way we're thinking. And to think about something from a different perspective, to allow for tensions of opposites to be held in ways that we didn't think were possible previously. The fact that two planets are in mutual reception like this and opposed to one another does not mean it will be easy. It means that we will also be challenged to find ways of compromising on things that feel polarizing, or we'll feel challenged to hold the tension of opposites. And yet it's just this holding of the tension of opposites that can allow for something truly revolutionary to happen in our minds, in how we perceive and how we communicate and how we think about life in the world and ourselves. It's a long transit we have all the way to the end of the year with three passes, the direct pass, the retrograde pass and the direct pass, during a time where polarization is sort of in the air, at least again here in the United States, for some of us, this will be a transit that will really force us to look at the tensions of opposites and how to hold them so on that note, I have put something together. And if you listen to my horoscopes, last week, Whitney mentioned something that I like to say, well, it was our monthly overview. And Whitney was talking about this month in terms of the idea that two things can be true. She said, I like that. You say that in your talks. And I was like, Yeah, I guess I do say that a lot in my talks, two things can be true. And I've heard it's not my idea. Obviously, I don't know where I heard that, but the first time I heard it, I said, Yes, maybe it's the fact that I have Mars in Gemini. But I really appreciate paradox, and I appreciate irony, and I I appreciate the fluid relating of the opposites, even when there's tension. I think anyone who's into astrology and studies it enough and comes to recognize that whether you're looking at Platonism or pythagoreanism, or Egyptian mysticism or Indian mysticism, all of the most likely philosophical schools that influence the early development of astrology, they are all schools that emphasize that reality works through opposites, just like Taoism, same, same idea so many ancient mystical schools worked with opposites and teaching us not just what they are, but how to think about what they are and how to work with and live with opposites. Jupiter and Gemini sort of like a whole year of the mantra that two things can be true, and that the more we dive into this chaotic mess of two things being true, the more that we stand to grow and learn so two things can be true. I have 10 examples, and I present these to you, not as things I want to assert, but as like a like a thought experiment, you could come up with your own list and do the exact same thing, come up with categories that make sense for you and work with them. The point of this exercise is to get us feeling the tension of opposites and working with the idea that holding the tension might be more important than resolving the tension by collapsing into one side or the other, this is the kind of idea, the kind of exercise that can prepare us for a good couple of months here where Mercury and Jupiter are in mutual reception, but opposed. So I'm going to talk about ideas that I find very polarizing. Now, it might seem, in approaching these that I've got it figured out. I do not. These are things that I feel I made the list based on what what intellectual, spiritual, philosophical tensions are the most difficult for me, and so you may have a different list again. And if you can just even if you if you experience friction in hearing this list, um, what I would say is just allow that in for a minute. You know, you can let it go, and you know, two minutes later you can let it go. Because, again, the point of this exercise is to play with the tension of opposites and play with this idea that two things can be true.

Adam Elenbaas
Two things can be true means that two sides of an opposition are somehow embedded in each other. And so there is a way in which all oppositions reflect something of a interdependence that exists, and the more we can work into some understanding of that doesn't mean that the tension will go away, but it means that we can appreciate that that tension is somehow a part of creation. It's a it's a part of reality. So anyway, all right, let's get into it. Number one, unfairness and justice. So I was listening to this podcast I've been telling you guys about called the Emerald, which I really enjoyed, and I listened to. An episode on animism. And then there was another one I listened to while I was cleaning the garage out credit, getting it ready for winter here in Minnesota. And it was on justice. And I so appreciated one of the points he made, which was that sometimes people include, you know, and this is including myself, and this is a point that my my spiritual teachers, when I was involved in the yoga tradition a few years back, emphasized a lot. It's never left me. It's still there's so many things I took from my experience in that yogic community that were really important. This was one of them that some of my teachers talked about as well, and he mentioned on the Emerald podcast, which is that we can have experiences of things that are just obviously unfair. There are examples every single day, if we turn on the news, or if we look around our life, or even in our own lives, where we just go that does, I do not understand how that is fair. And it's usually for that reason that we have a hard time trusting that there is something larger and more mysterious going on, like a universe that is ultimately just, that something like karma is at work and that justice is at play. And this is just one of a number of tensions of opposites, right, that I find really difficult. I find it difficult to square with what are clearly examples of what look like unfairness in the world and this larger idea that the cosmos is a place that is balancing everything out in the scope of eternity. You know, in the scope of time, the ongoing unfolding of the material universe, that there is a balancing act at work, and that just because I experience a level of unfairness, or I observe a level of unfairness, doesn't mean that there is no grander or greater order. It also just because there is some grander order or greater balancing that's happening in the cosmos does not mean that my perception or experience of unfairness is some lack of faith or trust either see, that's where the tension works in the opposite direction. Sometimes people in spiritual community say, well, everything is part of the Divine unfolding, and you just have to trust in everything. And there can be a way in which basic cruelties and the experience of unfairness is like bypassed or overlooked. And so two things can be true. There can be an experience that we have of things being unfair, and there can also be some larger process at work in which we trust, some larger process of karmic balancing that we may not always be able to understand. Sometimes we see it, sometimes we catch glimpses of it. Sometimes we don't understand how it works at all. Sometimes we need to feel and just acknowledge that this does not look or feel fair. And in an ironic way, it would be unfair to tell someone that they should just ignore or bypass those experiences or feelings and just trust in something bigger that's going on that they can't understand or don't have a clear it's mysterious, right? So I find this is one of the tensions of the opposite the way I'm describing them. The words I use are relative. You know, you might use other words, but yeah, there's an experience of unfairness. And there is also some maybe larger sense of of cosmic balancing that's always going on, that's always happening. And sometimes you can see it, and sometimes you can't, and sometimes you have experiences of unfairness that you can spiritually. You can step back from and just say, I don't understand this, but I'm going to trust that you know in the scope of everything, that everything will be balanced out. And sometimes you don't have access to that kind of perspective. So these two things can be true. And I think what is most interesting to me is the fact that these two things are so closely and intimately related to one another. They are somehow like this. There is a way in which the depth of the experience of suffering, cruelty, unfairness and those revelations of cosmic balance and justice are entailing one another and build into each other. I find that a very beautiful and difficult idea that, you know, I only sometimes grasp, but I can't. There's no way I could grasp it if I didn't have some ability to hold the tension of these. Is what feel like opposites to me, you know. So these are just examples. Number two is pain and transcendence, a very similar idea, which is that you know, suffer, hey, suffering, you know. And someone says, Yeah, well, you know, you're an eternal spirit, soul. You don't ever really die. You were never really born. You're a part of God. You're a particle of God. Isn't that all great and dandy, you know, doesn't that help you? Doesn't that help you to you know, it gives you a different way of looking at pain. You know, you just have to trust that it's all part of a greater things. It's very similar to the dichotomy between experiences of unfairness and some trust in a larger justice, or karma, or something like that. The same experience of pain and suffering and the experience of transcendence. It's like, oh, you're an eternal, immortal soul. Well, you know, how? How good does it feel for someone to tell you that when you're suffering, don't, don't, you know? It's like, somehow the two are part of one another. And I don't know. I mean, every ancient tradition that I've ever studied acknowledges the reality of pain and suffering at a very deep level, almost like the most fundamental level, and then simultaneously brings a transcendent or transcendental perspective, which doesn't mean that it's divorced from the world necessarily, either it's just it gives us some larger container of faith or trust or surrender or acceptance, whether we call that God or the Tao. But the two don't need to cancel each other out, even though there's such a temptation for the two things to want to do. So to me, it's always felt impatient when someone tells someone in pain to reach toward transcendence. At the same time, I can't help but notice that, as someone who has done a lot of counseling in my life, that there is a very natural and beautiful human way in which we surrender, open our hearts even more trust, even deeper, when really profound pain enters our life, we are often moved to onto our knees in a in a gesture of love and reverence. Reference, there was a piece in the Emerald episode on justice I was listening to recently, and he was, he interviewed Van Jones, I think it was, and Van Jones was talking about something that's really unique about gospel music in the south. And he was talking about how that that sense of, no matter what, what if people enslave me or people are cruel or kill me or beat me or whatever, that you can't take away my my hallelujah, he was talking about that. And that's obviously something that has been a really profound I mean, I think about was it? Was it Viktor Frankl, he wrote about something similar with respect to the Holocaust. And so there's a very natural human way in which, during the darkest periods, the most painful of periods, it's not at all a bypassing response to sing a song of praise, or to surrender or to take some kind of refuge in joy and trust, even if it's deeply painful, that's a natural human instinct and response, and At other times, it can be if someone's really suffering, to tell them, we'll just say, hallelujah. It's like the most insincere impatient response ever. So there's some way in which pain, just being pain, and not needing to be rerouted back to something transcendent, is, that's a real experience. We have to, we have to, like, give, just give a little space for pain, to just be pain. But it also doesn't mean that it's necessarily opposed to transcendence and the need for some faith or surrender or acceptance.

Adam Elenbaas
So you see, they feel like opposites, but I love all of the traditions, especially Tao ism. I love that kind of mystical spiritual instruction that says, when you feel like these things are opposites, just hold the tension. Work the tension. And we often find that they're like figure eight, like a little infinity symbol, that the opposites are moving in and out of one another. We're so impatient, you know, if anyone says something about transcendence, we, you know, trigger, just like a hair trigger. We go, don't tell me, I can't be in pain, you know. Or if someone is in real pain, just trigger. You. Just, just surrender. You know, we're so I think one of the symptoms of not knowing how to hold the tension of opposites is impatience and a lack of curiosity. You know about how polarized states are connected. You know, I've, I've spent a lot of time in my counseling practice with grief people grieving, uh, acute losses, you know, right around the time of acute losses, especially, there are waves of grief and waves of things that are kind of angelic, and they go back and forth. And as far as I can tell, a lot most grieving people that I've worked with are not judging themselves for vacillating between the two poles of the experience of loss or grief, Transcendence, pain without meaning. You know two things can be true, resilience and sensitivity. There's this big cultural conversation happening in the past. I don't know. I'd say, Guess. I'd say, like, a decade, if this, I don't know, it's a guess around the need for greater sensitivity, awareness of trauma, awareness of what triggers people because of what they what pain they've experienced and what traumas they've endured, to become more sensitive. Yeah, I, I'm not going to argue with that. You know, greater sensitivity to me, has made so much more sense since I've become a dad, right? I've seen how sensitive and impressionable kids are, and how much of US Fed trauma from childhood. And, you know, it's not a joke like, increased sensitivity is sort of like, it's a really profound revolution, in a way. And at same time, you'll have, you know, another group of people who will say, we are by by talking so much about sensitivity and the need to be more sensitive and more aware of sensitivities. We are emphasizing sensitivity to the point where we're becoming overset, overly sensitive, and we need to develop resilience. And it's just so predictable, right? It's these are archetypal opposites. Resilience and sensitivity are somehow like a figure eight, and there's a way in which people cannot become more resilient if there isn't greater sensitivity, but if the sensitivity is too great, they won't be resilient. And on and on it goes. And so again, I'm not at all suggesting in any of these that one side is better than the other. These are opposites that too frequently we are impatient about, in my humble opinion, and we should be thinking more about how two things can be true. There is a way in which, as we drift into the camp of resilience, we become insensitive, we become soldiers who can march through anything, and soldiers who can march through anything are often, you know, the ones that they come back from war. And they're, you know, it's the old phrase that my grandpa used, was shell shocked. It was like post traumatic stress from war, right, from combat and so forth. And this need for sensitivity is tremendous when you get too far into the resilient soldiers marching through life camp. But on the other hand, you swing too far into the sensitivity camp, then the most well intentioned, innocent, kind hearted jokes can be immediately judged, as, you know, like an assault or something. So, you know, there's a way in which we need you drift too far into that camp and you're not able to actually endure or have a sense of humor, or let things roll off from me, or whatever, but we like to polarize these things. And what about the idea that two things can be true? You know? What about a conversation between resilience and sensitivity? As opposed to, I'm a resilience person? Screw those overly sensitive people, or I'm a sensitive person, those resilient people are fascists. You know, it's like, cannot two things be true, fate and free will? This is a classic. When people come in to study astrology my program, they frequently think to themselves that astrologers, because we study things that can be predicted, must believe in fate. And then where's the free will? And then, you know, there'll be camps of astrology that reject traditional astrology because it's so predictive, and I believe in free will, and right, like that. Or there'll be traditional astrologers to say, I believe in fate, all of. These modern astrologers, with their emphasis on possibilities and agencies and agency and sovereignty and creating your own reality, you know, bunch of narcissistic fluff. And so the two camps, once again, were so impatient in ancient astrology, it there's a interesting paradox, right? We live in a world of cause and effect as a soul that is unbound, but is ironically bound in a body, and any choices we make in a karmic world of cause and effect will immediately bind us, in a sense, to a chain of events and outcomes and actions and reactions that is the nature of the karmic world. It is, by its nature, bound by laws and chains of cause and effect that will play out when choices are made. So as soon as a free choice is made, it's, in a sense, bound. And at the same time, the one choosing the soul is never bound. And so I heard this so many times when studying some of the shastras in the bhakti tradition, the Upanishads, Vedas, you know, like this. And the thing that was interesting was that you are both free and bound, you know, and you see the same basic idea present in many ancient Western traditions, that fate and free will are interconnected. You can't disentangle them. It's like the snake swallowing its own tail. There is a way in which we are free and bound simultaneously. There is a way in which we are sort of prisoners of fate, or we have destiny. It's a little more positive version of the word. Or there's karma, whatever you want to call it, and then there's a sense in which you are a free agent with choices to make that are open possibilities. We're again, I think, impatient. We think it's one or the other. I remember being told so many times, learn to hold the tension of how you know, fated, destined, bound events and free choices are always interconnected. And wow. You know, there's a way in which we're always free and always bound. I find that to be a much more engaging way of working with that polarity, you know, because otherwise what happens? We get polarized by it, independence and dependence. We hear the mantras of in order to be in the relationship of your dreams, you just need to get yourself right. You have to be whole and complete unto yourself, and then you'll be ready for someone. And then, on the other hand, we have people that say, Look, you cannot fully complete your process of individuation without relationships that serve in the process. Which is it? You know, do I just need to spend time alone and figure out me, or do I need relationships to help me figure out me? And the truth is, again, that it is both two things can be true. There's a way in which we have to hold and work the tension of being an individual, being and that we cannot exist outside of relationships with other beings. It's impossible we live in an ecology karmically. But isn't it funny how we put that pressure on ourselves and then we we rebel from it? You know, independence versus dependence. I have to figure myself out and be good in me. And no one can be a part of me, completing me. And then there's this other way in which, when you're in a relationship, you say, You complete me. You know, like Jerry Maguire, these are polarities. I see people struggle with them all the time, coming in for readings, being like, I think I'm supposed to just figure out me, right? You know, is it bad that I want a relationship? No, it's not bad that you want a relationship. You know, anyway, another tension of opposites, control and surrender. On the one hand, you have people who say, like, Look,

Adam Elenbaas
you need to get your shit under control, whether that's your diet, your self care, your life, your work, your relationships, like, buckle up, get your shit together. You know, take some take some responsibility, take some control and do better. Okay, we have voices in our head that are like that, right? I think we all do. And then there is, there is another voice that says, I can't do it all. I It's too much pressure. I have to just surrender and go with the flow. So then you get some extremes going, right? We've got the person who we've got your couch surfing friend who feels that it's tyrannical when anyone suggests that they might want to get the. Together. No offense to any couch surfing lovely people out there. And then you have, you know, then you've got the other person who is so buttoned up, so tight, so controlled and together that you wonder if they're even having any fun, you know. And this is, these are polarities. You think about Virgo Pisces as a little bit like this. These are, these are things that we constantly experience, as opposed to one another. I'm not just going to trust and surrender and let go and things will just take care of themselves. What is this Burning Man? Well, you might need to go to Burning Man, you know. And on the other hand, you know, the surrender gets so flowy that a person cannot actually take responsibility, or they're not contributing something, maybe to the world, maybe even the smallest thing. So these are dichotomies, right? And we're often polarized by them. There's some way in which I think most of us are being invited to control what we control and surrender what we surrender. I think all the time of the serenity prayer that we open with in the Al Anon program that I attend. You know, you know, it's like God grant me the serenity to change what I can and let go of what I can't and the wisdom to know the difference. And that's the that's the basic, that's that's the gist of the prayer that is holding the tension, nothing at stake versus lots at stake. Now there's a way in which someone will come up to you and go, the world is falling apart. Everything is going to hell. It's the, you know, the environment, the political atmosphere, the death, the warfare, it's all just, you know, someone else might come along and, you know, isn't it amazing how much progress we've made and how so people have views about the future, or where we're at now, or where we've come from and where we are in comparison to where we've come from that are very optimistic and others that are very pessimistic, and we often feel polarized by such things. Or another way that I put this would be, I'm just going to relax and trust in the flow of human history. I can't control it. I didn't create it. I can't cure it. You know, it's like that, like so I'm just gonna lay back, because I'm just going to trust that ultimately, there is nothing at stake in eternity, even though there's lots of drama going on on the human stage, and it seems like everything in the world is at stake. On the other hand, you will have people who will look at that or that will be bypassing. For some people, that will be a cop out, you know? And they'll you have people who will say, like, Look No, you've gotta you live in a world, in a community that you're part of, and ignoring it, burying your head in the sand, pretending like it's not. There is this again, kind of like a bypassing. You can't do that. There's lots at stake in the world. You're a part of it, you know. Play your part on the stage, you know, and we internally what to speak of, how we're judged, or how we get into debates or arguments with other people about this. We deal with the tension internally, don't we, where there's nothing at stake versus everything is at stake. I should care. I shouldn't care. I can do something. I can't do something. Attention of opposites, that if we hold, I think, interestingly, again, two things can be true. How do you make an effort and care while trusting that nothing is at stake? That's a good question. It was my fault versus it was your fault? I think this is one of the hardest places in my life, as you think of Ashley and me getting into an argument. Or maybe there's something that comes up in parenting, you know, my girls are trying to figure out whose fault was it, you know, or whatever, and when we can clearly see that someone else is at fault in a situation, it becomes really difficult to imagine that there's anything that we could have been at fault for, and that if we admit that we were at fault for something, we'll give up ground and we won't feel the validation we need to feel for what someone else did. That's a hard that's a tricky thing, because you might have, let's say, in the calculus of an argument, you may have said something that was like, you know, mildly offensive compared to maybe what your partner said that was really offensive. And so the greater offense lies with your partner. And I think that it is really hard in relationships to have some like adequate sense of who's who's at fault and who needs to take account, who needs to be held accountable for something and But too often, I think what happens. Is we drift into it was either you or me. I've got this one I'm to blame, you're not, or you're to blame, and I'm not. And it takes two people, right? Two things can be true. It takes two people to hold that tension of two people having some level of accountability, even if that level of accountability is a little different, doesn't always mean everything's equal, right? But it's really hard for human beings to come together and to work into the complexities of like fault or blame. And rather than, you know, trying to make it completely black and white. We step into the gray area, and we can work with balancing things without equalizing things. Do you know what I mean? That's really tricky. It's, it's a tricky space to work in, but I think what happens is, too quickly, we go to it was either my fault or it was your fault, and then we defend and protect and attack. And I think one of the best things I've ever learned, and you know, kind of comes from my Christian upbringing, is the kind of turn the other cheek mentality, where it's like and humility, where it's like, the more willing that I am to look at myself in a situation and what I've done or contributed to a situation, and to acknowledge that honestly, the better it is for my own soul, and the more likely it is that the person I'm in a relationship with will respond reciprocally or even take more accountability if they need to, than than myself. It's it is kind of the only thing I can control, is like, Well, what was my part? You know, it doesn't mean you become a doormat either. See, there's the tension. Again, you don't you don't have to take on all the blame, and in some situations, you may need to just end the relationship if someone can't take their own responsibility, or if someone can't acknowledge what they've done, and maybe it was a lot worse than anything you've done. You don't always just want to be a doormat, right? So it's again, there's a tension, there, isn't it? Two things can be true, and holding that tension is a more interesting project in my experience than always trying to figure out, like, well, was I wrong or were you wrong? Now, sometimes it is that simple, but you know, often, two things can be true. Number nine, I think we deal with this internally, I am good versus I am bad, black or white, right? Same thing. I'm a good person. Here's why I'm a good person. I'm I'm not a good person. Here's why I'm not a good person. It is really hard for us to hold the tension of those opposites and acknowledge that we were not we're people, that we're a mix, right? I mean, not that I really spend a lot of time thinking about myself as good or bad. I kind of try to stay away from it in general. But when I evaluate the goodness or maybe incorrectness or sort of like a mistake in character, attitude, behavior, words, what I'm careful to do is not be like trying to constantly put more check marks in the good column to convince myself that I'm good, not bad. It's more like an ongoing recognition that I constantly exhibit behaviors on both sides, you know, and hopefully nothing super egregious on the bad side, right? But you get what I mean, it's really easy internally. It's scary to hold a spot where we can go like, Yeah, I'm a little I'm a little shitty, you know, I've got some little shitty parts and but I think when we learn to hold those parts of ourselves, there's less compensating, right? There's less like doing things that overcompensate to convince ourselves that we're good, not bad, which are actually kind of insincere. In the end, there's another way in which, uh,

Adam Elenbaas
just people who have good senses of humor and can be self effacing and take their own darkness with a little like just a little light. That's a good quality. It's difficult to hold that kind of space. It's also really good to work this tension so that we don't become hypocrites. Here's the honest truth. You know, one of the basic features of human life is that probably most of us are this mix that we're talking about, of good and bad, light and dark. We have it all in us, and the people who are very aware of that and working that tension are the least likely to accost other people with self righteousness. I know what's right. I'm virtuous, I'm good, you're bad, or my position is the right position, your position is the wrong position. Because we know that we are a playground of light and dark, and we are working that tension, it becomes so much harder to become a self righteous person or to a. To act in a position of mighty virtuousness. You know, doesn't mean we don't have convictions. It doesn't mean we don't have things we advocate for or believe in, or that we things that we strive to protect, or things that we are very committed about, ethically, morally, politically, religiously, whatever, but we're very careful about how we hold the commitment to different virtues, because we know that we'll be a hypocrite if our tone, our mood, our approach, veers into anger and hypocrisy and self righteousness. We can't know that, unless we're holding this tension, two things can be true, and oneness and duality themselves, two things can be true. There's a way in which everything is one. It's really frustrating when someone is constantly trying to tell you that everything is an illusion and it's all oneness. And you know, at the same time, everything is many, diverse you're real. This is real. This isn't just an illusion. And in some way, it's all one the two things can be true in the grandest metaphysical sense. Has been a part of so many mystical and spiritual traditions. My favorite among them probably the Taoist tradition. But that's a tension that if we work with on a metaphysical or intellectual level, it can help us understand how to work with opposites on all the other levels. And guess what? Ancient astrology was rooted in that understanding of oppositions of opposites. So with mercury opposite Jupiter, with mutual reception, I came up with this today as a way of inviting us to hold and work with the tension of opposites, whatever they might be, nothing on this list may be the appropriate duality that you run into, right? But if nothing else, it can get you into the mindset of recognizing when tensions of opposites arise, and maybe help us to resist that impatient urge to collapse into one side or the other and remember our mantra, two things can be true. All right, so that is it for today. I hope this was a useful thought exercise. Stick around after I sign off. There is an informational talk about the first year program coming up on November 16. I hope to see some of you in class soon. Bye, everyone. Bye.