Neptune Enters Aries Spiritual Rock Bottom and Recovery

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/].

Today we're going to talk about Neptune entering Aries. Neptune is at the zero degree marker of Aries, which is a very powerful moment, a good time for us to reflect on the ingress of Neptune into Aries. I'm going to show you its total timeline terms of the amount of time it's going to spend in this sign now that it's ingressed and will not return again to Pisces, and we're going to meditate a little bit upon the meaning of this in terms of collective and personal shifts that happen spiritually.

Neptune in many ways, as it changes signs and moves through the Zodiac, reflects changes in our relationship with spirit, with Dharma or with an understanding of divine truth, divine wisdom. Many of the Neptune transits that people experience in their lives will be some of the most important transits that convey some sense of spiritual meaning and understanding and wisdom. It's a very mystical planet in this sense, and one that is frequently associated with spirituality itself.

So we're going to look at it from the standpoint, and we're going to explore the Saturn Neptune conjunction coming up in Aries today, from the standpoint of what it looks like when we hit a spiritual rock bottom in one of the ancient Vedic texts called the Bhagavat Purana, there is a section that talks about the symptoms of the Kali Yuga, which is like a dark age spiritually.

We're going to look at that today and consider that question, not that it really matters to me whether we are or are not literally in the Kali Yuga, but we're going to look at that description from the standpoint of understanding what spiritual rock bottom looks like. And we're going to think about that personally today, although the collective implications are strong right now, and we're then going to consider the wisdom of the same tradition alongside of the wisdom of the I Ching in terms of why these ages happen, why these moments of spiritual rock bottom happen, and how you can recover from them, how you can move through them with with wisdom and courage, and, you know, try to find your way back to the light if and when you lose it.

I think that stories of the loss of faith and the redemption or a return of faith are an integral part of understanding Saturn, Neptune dynamics in general. So we're going to look at all of that today, and I hope that this will be useful for all of you that is always my goal.

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And yeah, let's put up the real time clock and get into it all right. So here is the real time clock. Neptune has entered Aries yesterday. So we're in the first opening moments of Neptune's ingress into the sign of Aries. If we take this forward just a little bit, Saturn is going to enter the sign of Aries. Coming up real short here February 13 to 14th, Happy Valentine's Day, and then the two planets will conjoin at the same degree around February 20, just after a solar eclipse in Aquarius, just prior to a Mars Uranus squares is going to be very lit up, very powerful moment that we're living In.

So today we're going to reflect on that moment and talk about what it means to hit kind of a bit of a spiritual or existential rock bottom, and how to how to pick yourself up off the mat. What's the what's the wisdom about such moments? Because they really can be like spiritual moments of feeling like we're hitting a wall. All, and I want to talk about why that is.

But first, let me also show you now that Neptune has entered Aries, the total trajectory of this outer planet transit, because it's going to be in the sign of Aries for a very long time. So we've had a little taste of it last year. Now it's here to stay, no more Retrogrades into no more Retrogrades into Pisces. You can see that Neptune doesn't reach the last degree of Aries until 2039 and then if we take it forward just a little bit, we're going to see it enters Taurus around April of 2039 that's a good 13 to 14 year span.

Now Neptune is going to retrograde and it goes back. Does it re enter? I think it Rey? No, it doesn't. So it'll be 2039 that it changes signs fully. That is a nice, long stay that we have to look forward to.

Well, here's what I'm going to do today. I hmm, there is a text that I have read a few times, actually called the Bhagavat Purana, the version I like if you want to read it for yourself, if you feel like digging into, you know, the Puranas. Ramesh Manon wrote a really nice, I think, like, kind of modernized summary of the piranhas, called the Bhagavat piranha. There's two volumes in the sets, a box set that you can get on Amazon. Again, it's like it's a nice kind of modernization of it.

But in the 12th Canto chapter two, the symptoms of rock bottom spirituality for collectives, societies. Are described in this beautiful text. I have rendered that into my own little written version here that I want to read to you. So this text is giving us a description of what happens when the spiritual center of a collective, a kingdom, a village, a society, loses its soul, loses its purpose, loses its center, and goes through a crisis of faith. What is good, what is right, what is real, where is the direction that we're heading in?

I want to read this, but I also want to make it clear that I'm going to build some bridges between the collective application of this text and the personal. And then we're also going to draw some comparisons to what the I Ching says about such spiritual rock bottoms, and also what is the wisdom for moving through the such periods.

The truth is, from my perspective, everything that I understand about Saturn, Neptune transits is not that they are anti they're not meant to make you feel terrible. They're not meant to make you feel like nothing is real or true or can be relied on. We sometimes talk about Saturn Neptune like it's pulling the rug out from underneath you, and anything you thought was real or true or good, you're going to go through some terrible crisis of faith. You're going to feel lost and overwhelmed, you know, and and it just sounds terrible, but actually, within the description of the cycles of ages called the yugas, Dark Ages serve a purpose, just like dark nights of the soul spiritually serve a purpose.

They're not comfortable, and in a way, we do get lost. Saturn Neptune transits are their conjunctions are they often arise at specific inflection moments, personally, spiritually, collectively, when we've lost our way. But it is just At such moments where the I Ching the Vedic tradition, also says that the seeds of the return of light, of right action, of dharma, of spiritual direction, are being planted and will return.

And that's a very nice kind of juxtaposition between a kind of spiritual rock bottom zero, Aries, Saturn, Neptune, meeting with also a moment where the return of light, the return of dharma, is being planted and will grow from here. So I want to talk about that in terms of this ancient text.

Now, again, I'm not suggesting you don't have to be become a Vedic practitioner. You don't have to believe any of this. Literally. It's not important if we literally are in the Kali Yuga or not, or if there's some other Yuga that we're more appropriately in, because there are debates about all that stuff, and it's endless. And to my mind, it's above my pay grade, I don't know. So I'm not going to pretend like I do, which it seems like a lot of people are very comfortable doing.

But anyway, my Cynicism aside, let's talk about what the bhava Tom says are the characteristics of spiritual rock bottom for us as people, as social collective. The text says that in the Age of Kali Yuga, the goodness of religious traditions, their truthfulness, their ability to provide purification, tolerance, mercy, forgiveness and a. Clear sense of moral direction diminishes day by day.

Wealth and power alone become the markers of a person or a soul's worth. Justice bends toward strength rather than truth. Human relationships become transactional and superficial. How sexually attractive you are in a purely external way is valued over the substance of character.

Spiritual authority is judged by appearance rather than by an ability to accurately feel and sense someone's inner maturity, people will drift from one spiritual trend and influencer to another based on what is most gratifying to the ego, and will generally be unable to sustain consistent, devoted spiritual practices over time.

Those who speak cleverly will be mistaken for those who are wise, those without money will be judged unworthy. Those who are most hypocritical will often be praised as those who are most virtuous the places that we define as most valuable places for collective gathering will lack spiritual substance.

Now I love sports, but I think for example of the fact that for many people, the single largest temple like gathering of the year is the Super Bowl, and not any entrance into sacred communion with an place of spiritual substance, like going into nature, finding a beautiful spot. I'm not judging the Super Bowl, but you get what I mean. This text says that sacred places will be collectively defined in in ways that are less and less sacred.

Reputation will matter more than integrity. Fear and anxiety will saturate public life. Leadership will become predatory. The strong will dominate. The vulnerable will scatter. The Kali Yuga literally says that ecological stress and disasters will increase, that psychological distress, depression and anxiety will increase, that life will become shorter, diseases more complex and harder to manage, and anxiety will be rampant, socially paired with a greater sense of alienation and being alone.

And then this text says something crucial, and this is the part I want to focus on, because all of that can sound pretty bleak, although the text then says that when corruption has reached the fullness, this is like a poisonous fruit that ripens on the tree, but then it falls off, and at that time, it's not that human beings suddenly become virtuous, it's that the illusion starts collapsing under its own weight, because we've reached a spiritual rock bottom in this vision.

This isn't a punishment. This is a natural cycle, and that's where the ability to find compassion for it and intelligence and wisdom for moving through it comes from by not seeing it in terms of a punishment by not seeing it in terms of, well, there's just a bunch of bad people, but first, by identifying the condition within ourselves, not judging it, finding mercy for it, finding understanding for it, which really means understanding suffering, starting with our own.

And this becomes the condition for return, the return of light, the return of dharma, the return of wisdom, the return of a moral compass. In this view, by the way, no age is ever perfect and no age ever lasts forever, not in time and space, not in the embodied world, where impermanence is a basic feature, and the Buddhists teach the same thing.

Now the I Ching is another wisdom tradition that you all know, I love and spend a lot of time with, and it has some striking agreement about what a spiritual rock bottom is and where it comes from.

Let me find my notes here. So throughout the each. Ching. The I Ching is a living tradition, first of all, that's oracular and very personal, but it was also a philosophical text that spoke to the conditions of groups of people and their leaders, and was a text that was often the inspiration for leaders to lead virtuously.

It has a lot of instruction, in fact, for how to be a leader or how to lead during times of spiritual degeneration. But the reason that we find ourselves in a spiritual rock bottom kind of moment, societally or personally, in the I Ching, is because of a few basic things. First and foremost, it comes from lack of Alignment.

Alignment is a complex thing in the I Ching. It has to do with not feeling the right timing because we've lost internal reflectiveness not knowing the right time in which to act in one way or another. That Careful, careful vibratory calibration of actions, tone of voice that it comes from being in spaces that are about listening, reverent, sacred listening.

And that when we lose that, because we become so occupied with action and ambition and ego, our timing starts getting thrown off. And it's from that, almost like disruption of the right rhythm, that gradually moral direction and order starts to fall off, but it comes from the timing being off, and then our personal calibration of what is authentic and who we are and how we can contribute positively to the whole of the world around us is thrown off because our sense of virtuous direction, self understanding and timing has been thrown off, and that becomes a personal dynamic that's like a contagion collectively that occurs and leads To the whole society being thrown off.

when we have a reflective inner life, then we have inner integrity, humility, restraint and responsiveness. And that leads to knowing how to be in alignment in a very present way. Again, when the timing is off, when the present alignment is off, gradually, moral order starts to deteriorate, and then the needs of the whole become subsumed by the competing needs of individuals, and that's where tyrants come into power, and so on and so forth, all throughout the I Ching, it teaches this way.

And so the symptoms listed through the Bhagavat in terms of the symptoms of the Kali Kali Yuga are diagnosed sort of even more specifically in the I Ching in in this way. Now, by contrast, both wisdom traditions have descriptions of what it means to lead from a good place, what it means to live from a good place, and how to recover from spiritual rock bottom.

And this is important we're going to get into this next so personally, whether you're and you can even think of leadership as a metaphor here. That doesn't have to be about some big, glorious public post. It's a it's really just, how do I be a positive presence in whatever karmic ecosystem I inhabit? Where's the positive interaction between my alignment and alignment with the the world I inhabit? Right?

That the sagely wise being who is contributing positively to the guidance and alignment of the greater society is someone who has that alignment, because it's been forged from inner integrity, humility, restraint and responsiveness. And that is something that the I Ching, like all of these great contemplative traditions describe as something that cannot be established and lived from without practice, without daily consistent practice, and what is one of the great ways of reestablishing the loss of spiritual center of faith or of hitting a spiritual rock bottom, it is to saddle up with some spiritual discipline, and discipline in time becomes devotion.

What you make yourself do because you know you need to do it is not always fun, and might feel like the word duty, but if you keep doing it in time and you see the fruits of the kind of consciousness it produces, you realize it's no longer duty, it's devotion. Conjunction. But it still requires, at the beginning that you go, no more excuses. I need to act and create these qualities of consciousness through deliberate, conscious change of my lifestyle, of my habits.

This is spiritual bravery. This is zero Aries. This is Saturn Neptune, Aries, kind of courage. No more, am I not going to care for my health because it affects my consciousness and contributes to these dark times? No more, am I going to put toxins in my body all the time? Not get enough sleep, not hydrate properly, not move my body, breath and blood, not sit quietly, not that we have to be perfect.

The message is never that we have to be perfect, because that would be to lose the same alignment, to lose the same inner humility. Because it's not about perfection, it's about practice. It's about showing up and just trying your best, the ability to participate in the Sangha leadership of a society, which means the group collective effort to guide us in a good direction, starts with taking responsibility for the peaceful vibration of our own heart.

It sounds counterintuitive, because it's like, well, if it's peaceful, then it's got to be easy and flowing and fluid, and like something about practice and, you know, consistency, it feels too hard, but that's where Saturn and Neptune can come together and reframe it for us. Yeah, it is hard, but when you grow in your capacity to do hard things, you grow in your capacity to do one of the hardest things ever, which is to stay humble when the ego wants to react out of pride, anger, vanity and self righteousness, it is hard to stay soft in those spaces.

Paradoxically, it's easy to just roll right off the tracks. It's the practice of peace that keeps us on the tracks when that urge to act so quickly, so decisively, but without timing, without moral spiritual direction, without awareness, it takes over. This is what the I Ching describes. This is what the Vedic teachings describe.

They say that righteous leaders and we can extend this metaphor to each of us as part of the leadership and direction of a whole, if we want to be leaders, what does that mean? It doesn't mean status and fame and notoriety and rank and power and influence. It's more like thinking about what I am responsible for as a member of this society, is my consciousness being a vibration that is peaceful and wise, that is careful, thoughtful, aligned, humble, curious, caring, forgiving in every environment I walk into, and if I'm not taking accountability for the vibration of that consciousness in myself, then I am not participating in the leadership of my community, because that is the most fundamental, the most basic instruction that we ever receive, always from all of our saints in all of the traditions.

Peace starts with you. It starts with me. We lead through the quality of consciousness we create. That example is the leadership that is described as the antidote to the Kali Yuga, to spiritual rock bottoms.

In the Vedic tradition, a righteous leader, meaning a truly good one, not a self righteous leader, but a righteous leader is described as kind, tolerant and compassionate. They don't rule through cruelty or intimidation. They don't generate fear in the hearts of their people. There's a verse in the bhava that says that a good, virtuous ruler is like the Earth, though people walk on the earth, the earth is trampled upon.

You know this verse says, The earth just supports, sustains, holds space for and demonstrates humble restraint. You're walking on me. I'm not going to lash up and you know, hurt you. So the earth is so tolerant. It's funny to me, because, you know, when I had a lot of journeys with Ayahuasca, I went through a space where I thought, oh my gosh, you know, the humans are destroying the earth.

And I was really kind of like digesting all of that, some of the ecological sensitivities that I have, and was aware of when I was in the Amazon, because it's Japan. You were a pristine place. And I was considering the fact that they're torching a lot of the Amazon, and this was coming up for me in a ceremony one time. And I felt the earth, you know, in this kind of altered state.

Say, I hold space for all of this stuff. And, you know, if and when it comes time to shake you all off like a virus, I will, I just know, like that, that humor, you know, but whatever, the verse says that a good person, a good ruler, a good leader, is so patient, so forgiving, that even when it feels like you're you're getting trampled on or offended, you respond with you stay humble, you stay restrained.

Your power does not lie in dominating people, even when you have a right to lash out because you're being violated. But instead, there's this way of remaining, remaining in your piece. And we have many examples of this. This does not mean that you should be a doormat for abuse. Some people hear it that way. I do not think that is what is being taught here.

I think of the powerful example of, you know, peaceful, passive resistance. I think of the Quakers that I've spent a significant amount of time with here in Minneapolis, St Paul and their history of activism stemming from Peace, stemming from peacefulness. That's what that is saying. If you want to be a leader, be peaceful. Don't be easily offended.

Do not be easily offended because being easily offended means you're easily disturbed from your peace and compassion and the understanding of suffering and where persecution comes from, where you know people who would try to offend you and harm you, understanding that that comes from suffering, understanding that that suffering shares vibrational resonance with your own suffering. This is the instruction time and time and time again.

We don't like it. We really don't like it because it asks us to be humble. But when we understand suffering on that level, both of these wisdom traditions tell us that our power lies in our ability to protect our peace and to protect the vibration of peace, because we see that vibration of peace as the Buddha, as Christ, as the Bodhisattva, as the Goddess, and that We know that that's not my peace, it is peace, and I protect that.

I protect that peace because I'm a leader. It's simple. Each of us are guardians of the vibrations of heavenly energies. This is Neptune and Aries. The Vedic literature tells us that fear is a tool of demonic powers. It describes demonic powers in a lot of different ways. So rather than getting into the ontology of demons or anything like that, let's just think of it as anything, any energy that that's frequency is meant to disturb, violate, destroy, peace and fear is one of the agents, one of the recognizable agents of destructive power called it's called demonic power, but you get the idea when we start trying to get so specific and concrete about demons, most of the time we lose our peace. So take it lightly.

You Vedic Tradition says the true authority in the I Ching says this too, inspires trust, not anxiety. If I want my puppy to come and he's being a little defiant, rebellious teenager, if I use a harsh tone of voice. He gets scared and he does not come. When I need him to come, he's about to run out into the street, and I need him to come. He has to trust my voice. That's about my tone. It's about peace. It's about affirm. You know, I have to be firm but peaceful.

And what is interesting is that both in the I Ching and the Vedic tradition, justice is never abolished because of peace and humility. It's bound by compassion. It's led and directed by compassion, and this is thought to be a very powerful force. Is, it's a power that's shaped and restrained by ethics, and all of that comes from right alignment, right timing.

You can't know those things subsequently, in either tradition, without faithful practices of reflection. There are so many ways to do that. There's not one prescription, but for most of us, that means a mindfulness, an exercise of mindfulness. Some people journal, it's about taking care of your body. It's about taking care of your mind, taking care of your spirit.

I find it striking that as these transits are perfecting, there's a group of Buddhist monks walking peacefully, mindfully, without aggression, across the country, arriving in DC. I believe, I think it's, I could be wrong about this. I believe it's going to be right around the day that Saturn enters Aries, and whatever one thinks of politics, I think this is an image that is profoundly appropriate for Saturn and Neptune in Aries.

They haven't framed what they're doing as a protest. They have not framed it as an accusation. They are much more like the living presence of a symbol, a Saturn, Neptune and Aries, kind of symbol. Discipline can exist without force. We can focus on each breath mindfully, peacefully, and do something very difficult, like walk across the country, even though some of them are very old, we can do this, and it doesn't it can be disciplined, but it's not a force like a forcefulness.

We can carry presence without intimidation. We can have courage that comes through dedication and devotion, not force their walk, and its arrival in our nation's capital at the time that these transits are perfecting is worth sitting with, if you haven't already.

So there's a hexagram in the I Ching number 24 that is about the return of light, and it comes at the winter solstice, when things are the darkest. It's such a simple image, and it's one that you know has probably been overstated so many times that it risks being cliched. But there's a certain point in every diurnal rotation, every 24 hour day, where the darkness can get no darker. The sun at the IC comes to mind, and then it returns.

This is a moment that's really interesting, because Saturn Neptune often points to collapse, rock bottoms, disillusionment of faith, a crisis, existentially, spiritually, depression, melancholy, the feeling that you've lost the compass. But the power of this kind of moment at zero Aries is also the call to spiritual action.

Spiritual action, from the standpoint of these wisdom traditions, although it can be applied in any and every civic and social arena, in different, very specific ways and roles and functions. But broadly speaking, it starts with the idea that the direction of the Earth, the direction of the planet, is a collective effort, because we're not separate. We live in a contingent reality.

It's easy to say, well, this is the wrong structure or the wrong social direction. It's easy to look at that list of almost like diagnoses and be like, yeah, we're sick shit, you know, you know, but it is harder to say. It has to do with a consciousness, not a structure. We can't diagnose the problem superficially, this is a spiritual crisis, from the standpoint of Saturn, Neptune and Aries, and we can talk about differences in policies or ideologies or laws, and all of these things will happen.

They will happen just as surely as time and cycles and seasons keep rolling along. They will happen, and if you're involved in them, then this consciousness in those conversations will be super important. But for a lot of us who aren't directly engaged in the shaping of history on those levels, there is still a role of leadership.

The leadership comes from recognizing like Thich Nhat Hanh frequently said that. Next Buddha is a sangha by that it's like saying that the next vibration of peace to bring the world into light is a collective effort. It's not just a person, it's not just a leader that's going to solve all the problems. It's spiritual leadership starts with each of us saying, If I don't have that sense of alignment, which requires presence, the moral direction of my life will start to disintegrate.

The moral fabric of my life will be compromised in progressively deeper ways. And from that, the collective reality of everyone being out of alignment leads to the manifestation of of these symptoms societally. And so again, the the simple remedy is taking the spiritual, the moment of a kind of rock bottom as inspiration to get back on track.

And I'm not here saying this because I've got it figured out, or I'm on track and someone else isn't. I'm saying it because I'm ready to get back on track. I'm ready to take my game up in terms of my practices of peace, love, care, compassion. I'm ready to get better at those things. Saying that is like, whoo. Because if you say that, if you really say that and mean that, I know very well at this point in my life that our guides, the gods, doesn't mess around if you want that alignment. You know, the work will come.

And I think a lot of us that's scary, but this is why this is a perfect time. There's so much courage available to us right now. We don't have to know exactly how hard it will be to you know, like the fool and the zero Tao, just like curl ourselves off the cliff. Let's do it. Let's let's grow in our consciousness. Let's become more peaceful. Let's become more compassionate and aligned.

So whatever that looks like for you, I hope that you're thinking about how this moment can open a gateway for you to hit a little bit like a little mini rock bottom if you need to, maybe you don't, but also have the courage to significantly up your game. You know, we talk a lot about becoming our highest selves, but it's all rhetoric if we're not doing something every day to grow that in ourselves, I think this is the kind of uncomfortable fiery.

What are those like? A prod? It's like a fiery poker, like, come on. So if one thing we're doing here at Nightlight is we're getting together every day and sitting quietly if you want to join us, whether you can literally join us or not, take 10 minutes a day just sit and see how a time like this can take intentions like those and turn them into seeds that bear powerful fruit in time, the intentions we set, the seeds we plant spiritually through courage and bravery, just trying to grow and evolve spiritually is very powerful at zero.

Aries Neptune at zero. Aries, don't underestimate yourself. You can do it all right. That's what I've got for today. Hopefully this was an interesting exploration, and we'll see you again tomorrow. Bye.