Saturn & Neptune Set to Meet in Aries — A Shadow Nobody Likes to Talk About

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

Today we are going to start previewing Saturn and Neptune's upcoming conjunction in the sign of Aries, and we're going to talk about one of the major shadows that is frequently associated with the combination of Saturn Neptune archetypally, and that is the topic of spiritual bypassing.

We're going to take a slightly different angle on this conversation than the one that I'm guessing you are used to, and so I think you'll really enjoy this maybe a bit of a fresh take on a topic that can sometimes feel very familiar to us, like, I feel like spiritual bypassing is something that a lot of people talk about, that we're all sort of aware of in as a part of the discourse in spiritual communities.

But I think there's a slightly different way of looking at it that the Saturn Neptune conjunction in Aries can bring to the table. So I hope you'll find this useful and enjoyable today, a meditation that I've written, kind of an essay, reflective style on this conjunction. There'll be lots of opportunities for other kinds of reflections This, of course, just being one of them.

But anyway, before we get into it, remember to like and subscribe, share your comments, your reflections. It's always good to hear from you. You can find transcripts of any of these daily talks on the website that is Nightlight astrology.com.

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So we're meeting every morning, 9:30am Eastern Time, Monday through Saturdays, 11:30am Eastern on Sundays for time of quiet, meditation and community. It's a really nice thing. It's free. Come check it out. Be a great time to start a spiritual practice, which is part of what we're going to talk about today, spirituality, spiritual practice, what is bypassing.

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All right, now let's put up the real time clock. Let's take a look at what's happening in the sky today. Okay, so here we are, and we're coming into this week, and we are looking at the approach of Saturn into Aries. Neptune just entered Aries last week, and Saturn will shortly join Neptune in Aries, entering right around Valentine's Day, the 14th of February, and then conjoining Neptune by the 20th.

That conjunction will then take a couple of weeks to separate. You're going to give it all the way three degrees of separation, which is a good amount to get it kind of completely free from that conjunction. That doesn't happen until the end of March, so it's a full month plus of having the two planets closely conjoined.

Now this is arguably one of the major transits of the astrological year, so it makes sense that we cover it from a variety of different angles.

Well, did you know that Saturn Neptune, for a very long time, has been associated with the conversation between transcendent or transcendental things, that's very Neptunian and worldly things that belong to the realm of the body and the earthly material sphere.

Saturn was the planet that sat at the edge of the visible Cosmos, demarcating the boundary between spirit and matter, and so Saturn alone in ancient astrology, before the advent of the outer planet, Neptune, in the language of astrology, was often used to encapsulate and kind of incorporate the dichotomy between spirit and matter, the intersection of spirit and matter in things like death and mortality, The afterlife, the evolution of the soul, moksha, but also the living of a life bound by karma.

Saturn often embodied the strange dualities between these things in ancient astrology. Interestingly, when Saturn, when Neptune was discovered, it was discovered in a conjunction with Saturn, as though somehow this strange, intangible other world of Neptune needed to cross through the boundary of Saturn.

So there's been a long conversation about spirit and matter that constellates around Saturn and Neptune. That's the point. Now, understandably, that means that conversations about how to be both a spiritual being and a material being at the same time tend to constellate around this archetypal configuration.

What I want to say today about this has to do with a topic that comes up regularly in the light of such archetypes, and that is the question of spiritual bypassing. This is one of the potential shadows of anything Neptunian, let's call it or anything spiritually focused, is that it somehow forgets the world or tries to escape it, or, in the name of transcendence, ignores something sacred, embodied.

That's right here. Well, this is a conversation that comes up frequently, again, with this archetypal combination. So I've written something today to provide a slightly different, let's call it Valens, or to describe a slightly different way of holding that archetypal tension, because it is archetypal, after all, and it is a Saturn Neptune theme.

But again, this is just for your consideration, and I tried to present it in a way that is really not about solving a debate or coming to any hard conclusions, or that I necessarily want anyone to think about these things exactly the same way. I do consider this as a kind of probing, roaming exploration of the archetypes and see where it takes you. So here it is.

You know, in my work as an astrologer now approaching, getting closer to two decades in professional practice. This is my 16th year going on, and before that, 10 years owning a yoga studio, yoga studio owner and teacher, as someone who wrote, spoke, talked and educated about entheogenic medicine for a significant period of my life, even when I was younger, I was a former youth minister in the Christian church, and I grew up a preacher's kid.

I'm deeply familiar with the ways that spiritual conversations within spiritual communities tend to unfold. I've encountered them in person and for most of my adult life online, across social media, platforms and forums, YouTube, Spotify, Instagram, within various communities that I've helped build or participated in, astrology classrooms, Ayahuasca circles, yoga studios, churches, study groups.

Over time, you begin to recognize these familiar patterns. The language shifts slightly. The esthetics may change, the platforms may evolve, but the philosophical tensions underneath remain remarkably consistent.

These conversations can often feel contemporary to us and urgent, but in truth, most of them are ancient. They are 1000s of years old, and you can find them in the texts and conversations of sages and everyday people across all eras and all times and places on the planet.

They are conversations that humanity itself have been having for as long as we've been conscious enough to reflect on things like suffering and meaning, transcendence and mortality. Sometimes we're aware of this. Sometimes we recognize that these debates are like these familiar streams carved by water that's been flowing the same way for millennia, cutting its channels through human consciousness, the way that rivers carve canyons through stone.

But sometimes we're not aware of this at all. Sometimes we feel as though we're encountering these thoughts for the very first time, as though their problems were naming that are uniquely modern or personal, when in fact, they are among the oldest and most essential questions we've ever asked.

That's why a talk like this can help make us aware of them as archetypal. That's the hope, anyway. But over time, I've learned that there's almost no conversation within spiritual discourse that isn't meaningful on some level, these conversations endure because the conversation itself matters. They survive because they touch something that's real in our experience.

And having had the privilege of participating in many different kinds of spiritual conversations for many years, both outwardly and inwardly, within my own practice, I've noticed that one of the most consistent features of my own psychology has been a commitment to daily spiritual practice.

And so most of these conversations, the familiar discourses of spiritual communities, for me, a lot of them have taken place from within the standpoint of having a daily spiritual practice for close to two decades now, more days than not, I've engaged in some form of spiritual practice every single day.

That practice has taken many forms, and believe me, I have never been especially attracted to rigid or prescriptive definitions of what spiritual practice is supposed to look like, but I do believe one thing very strongly, which is that when conversations about spirituality and the intersection between spirituality and worldly life are held from within the lived container of daily spiritual practice, they look and feel and are profoundly different than when they are held from the outside.

So this difference matters, and that's what I really wanted to talk about today, because when spiritual practice isn't being lived, spiritual conversations tend to become very abstract and ideological or performative. They become about social posturing or positioning.

But when practice is lived, when it's returned to again and again, imperfectly but sincerely, for many of us, that may resemble some inconsistency in our practices, how often, how regular, but when practice is lived and when it's returned to again and again, imperfectly but sincerely, the same exact conversations are experienced differently.

These conversations about spirituality, different kinds of spiritual debates and conversations become much more humbling. They become much more intimate, and they are much more deeply personal to us because we are approaching them from within a regularly committed spiritual lifestyle.

I think that this distinction is really important as we're approaching the Saturn Neptune conjunction, because Saturn and Neptune together describe a very powerful psychological insistence. It's the longing for the spiritual and the material to meet and to be fused together.

Neptune symbolizes the ideal, the imaginal, the eternal, the divine, the transcendent. Saturn represents, by contrast, the real, the finite, the earthly, the mortal, the weight bearing realities of time and responsibility and consequence and incarnation. It's like the cross of matter, even when these planets are not conjoining in the sky, they cross paths as archetypes constantly in our lives, we all have a Saturn and a Neptune somewhere in our charts.

One of the most familiar ways that this tension expresses itself in our spiritual communities is on through conversations about transcendence and imminence. Neptune frequently associated with transcendence, Saturn with imminence, and their intersection often gives rise to what has come to be known as spiritual bypassing.

Conversations about spiritual bypassing, the concern around spiritual bypassing arises from the recognition that spirituality can sometimes be misused as an escape mechanism when a focus on enlightenment, ascension, salvation, Paradise, the afterlife or spiritual evolution comes at the expense of an embodied human life, something goes awry when spirituality functions to repress grief or bypass trauma or deny desire, or suppress anger or disengage from social responsibility, it loses its integrity.

The complaints that emerge from this concern are familiar, and they should be familiar to you as well, because these conversations are so very old, like those pathways of water worn through rocks. I don't care about meditation if you're not making an actual difference in the world. I don't care about entheogens, if you can't figure out how to live a life, I don't care what spiritual language you use, if it's not grounded in real engagement with a real life in a real world.

I think these critiques arise from something that is deeply true. The material world, however impermanent, is real. The body is real. Relationships are real. The suffering of the world is real and spiritual. Traditions that dismiss this world as illusory, fallen, sinful and unworthy will often provoke within us a very powerful counter response, the insistence that incarnation itself is sacred.

We say to ourselves, don't avoid darkness, and we love talks on Pluto, right? We're not avoiding darkness. We're confronting it. Don't attempt to transcend it prematurely this world. Enter it, accept it, love it.

You know, even within Christianity, despite its historical emphasis on fallenness, I grew up in a church where I encountered many theologians who framed the Christ story not as an escape from the world, but as its sanctification. Incarnation. Was taught to me as a kid by my father as a bridge between the time bound world and eternity, matter and spirit are joined in the Gospel story, not divided.

That's something that I was taught as a kid, even though within many Christian communities, the emphasis on a split between the world and heaven is much more problematic. So these conversations really have been had everywhere.

But this insistence that the body is holy, that nothing here needs to be skipped or repressed, is a legitimate and often essential phase of spiritual maturation, I think about this within myself. If anyone knows me and knows my channel, you'll know that some years ago, although I was in a deeply monastic, committed phase of my life, I was meditating two to three hours daily for five years.

It was too much, and I had to meaningfully reflect on a level of spiritual engagement that was appropriate for the simultaneous living of a life, and I had to step back from that level of monastic engagement. So I know I'm very aware of this conversation in my own life, and especially though during moments of collective crisis, this tension intensifies, I have noticed this time again, watching many different collective events unfold astrologically over 16 years, maybe none more intense than during covid. You know, Saturn, Pluto that year. This year, things are ramping up quite a bit, and it's especially during these moments of collective crisis, when the tension intensifies, when prayer is suggested after tragedy that people respond, I'm done praying. I want action.

When mindfulness is proposed as part of the remedy of particularly charged times, others say, Screw your mindfulness. I want a policy change. You know, I want different leadership. These responses to me are completely understandable, but here's where I want to gently push back and where Saturn and Neptune and Aries, I think, offers us a different way of thinking about this conversation, from within the lived tension of daily spiritual practice and daily life, trying to be married or raise kids, to maintain friendships, to work, to contribute something meaningful, I have come to suspect that what many people are reacting against is not really spirituality itself, but unlived spirituality.

There is a vast difference between the two. There is a vast difference between spiritual realization, spiritual integrity, spiritual commitment and spiritual performance. There's a big difference between discipline and outward displays of spirituality. There's a difference between devotion and posturing.

Many people are drawn to spiritual ideas, to spiritual language, to symbols or to styles. And to me, that's not a failure, it's often a kind of genuine developmental stage. I don't mean that in a condescending way. I mean that in a genuine way, intellectual curiosity about spiritual life isn't a crime. A spiritual esthetic, wearing yoga pants or something is not a sin.

But when spiritual language is used as moral authority, especially in times of suffering without vibratory evidence, let's call it of lived practice, of lived commitment or humility, then people become rightly frustrated.

And so what we are often responding to is not an overly spiritual saturation, but actually just hypocrisy, because notice how rarely we accuse genuinely devoted monastics of spiritual bypassing. We do not criticize Buddhist monks for walking across the country in peace and living their monastic lifestyles.

We do not accuse lifelong ascetics, who are sincerely devoted, of escapism. Why? Because their commitment is unmistakable, their absorption is real, and they tend to be the last ones offering simplistic spiritual solutions during times of moral and spiritual degeneration and crisis.

And this, to me, reveals something really important, because I don't think that we are troubled by transcendence itself, but transcendence without real, absorbed devotional integrity.

So this in mind, there is another hypocrisy that runs in the opposite direction. It is possible to weaponize the language of spiritual bypassing in order to protect a covert allegiance to materialism. Most spiritual traditions, from yoga and Buddhism to Christianity, Sufism, Western esotericism, have warned us far more consistently over 1000s of years about the dangers of material identification than they have about the dangers of having too much spirituality.

And I say that kind of like you know we got, let's not forget this, because to mistake ourselves entirely for temporary roles, gratifications, possessions, our temporary body, in many traditions, is the fundamental bypassing problem, you know.

And this doesn't mean rejecting the world. It means remembering that the world is not the totality of who we are. Our body is not the totality of who we are, our temporary ego in this lifetime, in this body is not the totality of who we are.

The real question has always been, how do we hold spiritual orientation without losing reverence for this life, and equally, how do we honor this life without losing contact with spirit?

So. Yeah, that conversation though, it becomes impossible if we bypass spiritual cultivation and consistency altogether. And I just think it's worth pointing out, because it can get so we can get so lost in it.

So I mean, here are some just, I think, funny, grounding questions that I know I have to ask myself whenever I feel tempted to accuse someone else of spiritual bypassing, even if it can be quite annoying, the question is, Have I practiced today? You know, have I been quiet or have I listened inwardly? Have I cared for my body in the right ways? Today is if we claim to value embodiment, then have we honored the body through rest, nourishment, movement, breath, moderation, if we criticize, dissociation, how much time have we spent numbing ourselves through endless scrolling outrage, cycles and information, overwhelming distraction?

I think you know material life is unavoidable. In other words, spirituality, for most of us, is not spirituality requires cultivation. It requires discipline. It requires return. It requires a kind of focus. It requires falling off the horse, but getting up again, time and a time, time and time again, to have a spiritual focus, material life, unavoidable.

And so there's just a little bit of a quiet irony in everyone constantly calling out spiritual bypassing when many of us ourselves have no spiritual practice to stand on. It's, I just think it's kind of ridiculous.

This finally brings us back to Saturn Neptune and Aries, right? Because Saturn and Neptune, when they get together, they can they tend to coincide with moments when collective ideals, spiritual longings and material realities are forced into direct contact. Illusions are frequently tested. Dreams are asked to take form, and longings have to become more responsible.

Aries zero. Aries is a beginning point. It's an ignition. And it's a fiery place of initiation. It's I was using this image in a talk I gave the other day. It's like the clay is wet, so you can impress something upon it.

So rather than perpetuating familiar cycles of polarization, spirit versus matter, Transcendence versus imminence, accusation versus defensiveness, this is a conjunction that can be about building a bridge, not intellectually, not in theory, not rhetorically, but practically.

This is an amazingly ideal time to start a daily spiritual practice and then to learn the actual lived art of bridging spirit and matter where questions of spiritual bypassing are taking place from within a spiritually focused life, when we have a spiritually focused life with daily, consistent habits of spiritual devotion, it's only from that place that a meaningful experience of what it means to strike the right balance between the material world and The spiritual world can happen.

In other words, and isn't it just ever so gently ironic that a lot of people who accuse other people of spiritual bypassing have no spiritual practice to stand on to know what the difference would be. I just it's like, in other words, a really good person to ask, what does it mean to have the strike the right balance between spirituality and the living of a life. Are going to be the people who have been doing it, you know, not the people that just attack anything that's spiritual, as though anything spiritual, inherently is anti material, and these, this is just such a funny irony that's baked into questions about spiritual bypassing.

I watched this so many times as a yoga teacher during our yoga teacher trainings. And I mean this with all respect, because it's such an important conversation, you know, and it's not an easy one to, like, find the right balance with.

But like, just for an example, and I'm off the track of my essay at this point, people come into yoga studio and they're taking a yoga teacher training, and for that training, for the duration of six months, they are required to have a daily spiritual yoga practice.

For many of them, they yoga has been a part of their life, but not that consistently. And so then, over the course of six months, you start seeing people when they have a daily spiritual practice, they start to engage with that dilemma in a totally different way than bystanders criticizing you for being overly materially identified.

When they themselves are or being overly spiritually identified, when they have no spiritual practice. You know, all of that is grandstanding. It's a lot different when we get into a daily spiritual practice and then have to figure that out. And I watched it students, and I've gone through it, and I still go through it.

Students of yoga will go through this arc, right? And it's very simple, they'll, they'll have three months in. They'll many of them. And it's human, so I'm not judging. Anyone will develop a bit of a spiritual ego. Look at me. I'm superior. I'm not. I'm disinterested in so many, you know. Look at, look at, look at these fools so lost in the material world. I'm spiritual now, right?

It's a real thing that happens because you are really feeling like you're starting to transcend, and you really are starting to transcend some of the traps of the world, some of the traps of material identification, some of the traps of the mind, some of the traps of judgment, all of these things.

But then as you're transcending them, you can start to take pride in them, and they can become the source of another, yet another version of the ego. But this is part of a process that has been outlined by many spiritual traditions that is also considered a natural part of starting to bridge spirit and matter.

It's a it's it's as predictable as you know, kids getting proud that they can walk a few steps and then crashing. It's just like, that's just part of the process.

And then watching those same people three months later getting a little bit more humbled, because maybe their arrogance got them in trouble somewhere, and then they realized, oh, like, No, I'm I still, it's the same. Struggles still exist.

And by the end, you often see the full arc of people, six months of daily spiritual sadhana, really doing some special evolution, you know, like, wow, they've really figured out this spiritual practice does help me transcend certain issues, but it also I can be tempted by my spirituality to develop a spiritual ego, or to develop some sense of superiority, or to start condemning the world, or start acting like I'm above it all, but you don't.

There's no way to actually inhabit the right balance, unless you actually enter spiritual practice from within which you figure it out. And How helpful is it if most of our criticism toward criticism of people's spiritual bypassing is coming from a lot of us who are not being spiritually consistent, you know what I mean.

So a great way of looking at Saturn Neptune is for as real and important as questions of spiritual bypassing are, so are questions of materialism. And if we are not taking up a spiritual practice, right? Because we're so deeply identified with the material world that and so defensive of it, that anything that demands some spiritual consistency we're allergic to.

Well, that's equally as problematic as someone who's using spirituality to transcend and bypass real worldly things, you know? So it's a conversation, isn't it? And it's a bridge, isn't it? And that's Saturn Neptune. Saturn Neptune comes together and says, Look, you join these things two together. It is work. It is a daily work.

There's no way of having that daily work if we don't tend to the temple, to the altar, to the daily, if we don't draw daily from the well and look again, not to be prescriptive, what that looks like for you and for the next person is different, but everybody knows, once you have done it, what it feels like to tend to your inner spirit, soul, and tending to it and listening to it is like watering plants in a garden.

It is an act of devotion and nurturance and remembrance. It's like having to light a candle and put it on your altar every day, and it inconsistency is fine. It's part of the journey.

But if we, if we don't know very well that the only path by means of which to engage with the world and spirit is through daily spiritual practice being wed to lived human experience, then we've lost the plot. That's what spirituality is about.

So it's a great time to bring that kind of spiritual focus back into our lives, recommit to it, refined it, or get it going. And what does it look like for me? What what is really nourishing for me in in that means, how do I care for my body, but also, how do I care for my soul? They're all considerations of daily spiritual practice.

And the clay is wet right now, so take advantage of it. Imprint your life right now with some spiritual intentions for daily spiritual life, daily spiritual care and practice. What become what's hard at first becomes devotion in time.

So my encouragement to everyone as someone who's struggled along like everyone else, but has seen the value of daily spiritual practice in my life for a very long time. I can't encourage all of you enough come join us for meditation. This is a great way to get it started.

It doesn't solve all your problems at all to have spiritual practice, but it's a totally different conversation approaching life, having that as a tool and an ally for our experiences.

So anyway, hopefully, kind of a fun, fiery sermon today, a little different angle on things. I hope you enjoyed it, and we will see you again tomorrow. Bye, everyone.