The Tao Te Ching for Astrologers: Verses 23 & 24

Transcript:

Hey everyone, this is Acyuta-bhava from Nightlight Astrology. Today we are going to continue in our series on the Tao Te Ching for astrologers by looking at verses 23 and 24. Now, as I say, at the beginning of each of these videos, you don't have to watch every video in order. You don't have to have seen everything that came before this one. Every episode can work as a standalone episode. Of course, I think you get the most out of the series if you watch all of them. But you could certainly start with today and see what you think of it if you've never listened to these before. The reason that we're doing this is the Tao Te Ching is one of the oldest spiritual texts and most beloved spiritual texts on the planet. And as long served as one of the main inspirations for my own astrological practice, people ask me all the time, like, how do you generate content, you know, five days a week, year-round? Well, that's in large part due to the sacred texts that are a part of my reading. Every time that I read sacred texts from the yogic tradition, or maybe the Tao Te Ching, the Hermetica. Those texts have a way, both creatively and poetically and philosophically, of inspiring and informing the work that I do. And the way that I approach astrology in general. As an astrologer, and I look back on the 2000 years of astrological history, one thing that you find across the board is that astrologers have always talked about the importance of the underlying spiritual meaning of astrology; what why are we doing this? Why are we here? What does this? What does this do for the soul? So these videos are also a way of making sure that as we are taking in content, which is constantly geared toward what's going to happen, what to make of what's going to happen, and so forth, that we're pausing to say, and why are we doing this? So on that note, I will read the two verses as I do every episode, and then I will reread them, and the second time through, I'll pause after each verse and offer some reflections on those verses in light of my daily practice as an astrologer. And hopefully, those insights will translate for you as daily consumers of astrological content or, you know, students yourself. So let's go ahead. I'm going to share my screen; I'll put the text for the day up on the screen. I'm going to put this into full-screen mode here. So this is verses 23 and 24.

Speak little hold to your own nature. A strong wind does not blow all morning. The cloudburst does not last all day. The wind and rain are from heaven and Earth, and even these do not last long. How much less so the efforts of man. One who lives in accordance with the truth becomes the embodiment of doubt. His actions become those of nature, his ways those of heaven. It is through such a one that heaven rejoices, that Earth rejoices, that all of life rejoices.

Verse 24. On his tiptoes, a man is not steady. Taking long strides, he cannot keep pace. To the self-serving, nothing shines forth. To the self-promoting, nothing is distinguished. To the self appointing, nothing bears fruit; to the self-righteous, nothing endures. From the viewpoint of Tao, this self-indulgence is like rotting food and painful growths on the body. Things that all creatures despise, so Why hold on to them. When walking the path of Tao, this is the very stuff that must be uprooted, thrown out, and left behind.

Go back and read verse 23. Again, speak little hold to your own nature. A strong wind does not blow all morning. A cloudburst does not last all day; the wind and rain are from heaven and Earth. And even these do not last long. How much less so the efforts of man. One who lives in accordance with the truth becomes the embodiment of Tao. His actions become those of nature, his ways those of heaven. It is through such a one that heaven rejoices, that Earth rejoices, that all of life rejoices.

A couple of things come to mind when I read this first. One of my favorite practices since I was in graduate school. During graduate school, I lived in a little cottage. On my grandfather's land, my parents had built a retirement home at the time, prior to their divorcing, and they ended up selling this place. I lived there while I was in graduate school for creative writing and drove back and forth to the university. This was Central Michigan University that I went to for my master's degree. And I had the practice of sitting out in the night by our bonfire pit, under the stars, and I really enjoyed the quiet of like a bonfire in the backyard. And it was something that I learned, you know, like sitting in silence. And I was reflecting on this recently because I sat out and had a bonfire in our backyard. And I sat by myself at night after we hung out with the kids and stuff. And then they went to bed, and my wife went to bed, and I sat there by myself for a good long while. And I just listened. And, you know, sometimes, that's all it takes, it takes a nice long period of sitting quietly in nature and just listening. And in doing that, I find that I will come back to have a very, almost like the feeling of being an animal, again, like very present very in my body, grounded, but you know, open mind open, heart open, eyes, aware, attentive, listening, responsive, sensitive, present, but also like earthy. And it's in those spaces that I have always realized since I started making content that if I don't do this, if I don't return to this space regularly, then there's no chance that I can speak anything meaningful from that space. If I don't create that space and get familiar with it, and learn how to inhabit that space, then there's no chance that anything I create, for example, on YouTube, about astrology, will be able to embody that or bring something of that into what I create. And I'm not saying that I succeed at that every day, but I will tell you that my daily mantra meditation practice, along with sitting in silence, sometimes it's reading quietly, other times it's sitting by the fire.

That it is, specifically because of those spaces, that I'm able to create any, to my mind, meaningful content that I create on this channel or anything meaningful to say about astrology. But that doesn't stem that doesn't just, that doesn't come from come only from; what am I trying to say? What I'm trying to say is that that doesn't just apply to creating content; it comes to the way in which I actually relate to astrology itself. It's not just. Well, I gotta get quiet. So I can come up with a good top 10 list for the day, you know, usually, I noticed I started noticing what the planets are doing. As my mind is filling up with thoughts, plans and goals, and fears and hopes, and now, it's the stuff of life. It's not; I'm not judging it at all. But my mind becomes filled with those things. And turns with those plot lines, just like the heavens are turning. And the aspects between the planets are being formed. And I'm filled up, and then I'm emptied out, I get something that I want. And then the satiation and then the emptiness and then I want something, or there's something I'm doing, it's fun, it's satisfying. And then it's over. You know, there are these very familiar patterns. And I am able to notice them, corresponding with the planetary motions in my life only because I have daily spaces that I returned to over and over and over for years now, every day that allows me to get back to that attentive, quiet, earthy, silent, present place. I'm not always good at it, but I create time for it. I make sure that I at least try To get into that, almost like a primal listening position. And it's my feeling that astrology, when you pair it with this kind of mindful practice, like a prayer or meditation or just going out into nature and sitting on a stump somewhere, really and just, you know, just listening. Once you do that, you're able to start perceiving, okay, yes, I've gotta get back into the slipstream of stuff with my job, or my kids like life is gonna keep moving, the heavens are gonna keep turning. And I have to; I can't just like sit on the banks of the river, I'm here to float down the river or walk down at or swim it or whatever. But I've got to get in; I can't. But because I take breaks on the shore, you know, because I do that. When I get back in like, I know what I'm doing. I know, at the very least, what's going on around me; I don't completely lose myself. And I'm able to see that the strong wind doesn't blow all morning. The cloudburst doesn't last all day, the wind and rain, that these things come and go, that they're also literally from heaven.

Whether it's the thoughts in my mind, the emotions, or the events around me, I can start to appreciate them like deeply feel, not just gratitude, like I got something, but gratitude. It's almost more just like an aesthetic reverence and appreciation. And sometimes, like a dialogue and emerging sense of, you know, special relationship with something that is unspeakable. It's moving through everything. This, to me, is the Tao; this, I call Krishna in bhakti-yoga. Anyway, it's my feeling that if you use astrology appropriately, you become the embodiment of this way this in this beautiful intelligence moving through things, but it's really hard to do. So if you're only ever tuning into astrology from the standpoint of just okay, what's going to happen, oh, my God, what's going to happen? What's moving? What's going on? It's really important that you pair it with some kind of reflective quality. And notice that in the Tao Te Ching, that's exactly what is being taught to us over and over again, there's this all these different kinds of motions, it goes like this, and then it goes like that. And you can notice it and feel this deep happiness if you reflect upon it on these rhythms and cycles of energy and nature that are moving with this very deep divine intelligence. Alright, number 24.

On his tiptoes, a man is not steady; taking long strides, he cannot keep pace; to the self-serving, nothing shines forth; to the self-promoting, nothing is distinguished. The self-appointing nothing bears fruit to the self-righteous; nothing endures. From the viewpoint of Tao, this self-indulgence is like rotting food and painful growths on the body, things that all creatures despise. So why hold on to them when walking the path of doubt that this is the very stuff that must be uprooted, thrown out, and left behind.

The other problem with astrology, frankly, is that if you're not being, if you're not studying, or training yourself, or studying with community or teachers, a collection of people who pair astrology with a sensitive and reflective approach to life, then the only reason we're just tuning in because it's like celestial. You know, it's the celestial word on the street; what's happening? What's happening, oh, my God, you know, like that. If that's all that it is, then we'll all that we're really doing is looking at the planets and in terms of what they're doing for me, or what they may or may not provide me with, or whether I like or not, like what they give if I should be afraid or excited about what's going to happen. But why do any of that? Why?

You know, Is that all there is? I mean, that's something. It's something that I care about pretty regularly, but it's not all I care about. Sometimes you just have to sit by the fire and listen, listen really deeply. Because it turns out that if we're nothing but self-serving, sometimes people get black or white, and they're thinking, Oh, got it, you're either kill the ego, you know, or you're completely self-serving, that's a pretty rigid way of looking at the reality of having an ego the ones that want to kill the ego are in some ways, the ones that are, you know, I've experienced in my life often times, still really dealing with the ego. The ego is a servant.

But if we're nothing but self-serving, then nothing will shine forth; if we're nothing but self-promoting and are hoping that the stars will feed into our self-promotion, then nothing will really stand out ever. If we are nothing but giving ourselves congratulation for everything, nothing we do will actually bear fruit. If we're always right about everything, nothing that we do will really endure because things that endure require that we work through problems and difficulties and find interesting solutions. And if we want to earn something, you know, we have to go through the process of sometimes failing and sometimes doing a good job. You know, if we want to be promoted truly and stand out in an interesting way, you almost have to forget about trying to get anywhere.

So similarly, with astrology, what I've noticed is that if you want astrology to do amazing things for you, you have to find more reasons to be interested in it other than what is it doing for me today? What is it? What kind of news or insight is it giving me? How is this getting me off? You know what I mean?

From the viewpoint of Tao, self-indulgence is like rotting food and painful growths on the body. To me, the evidence of astrological sickness, right, if I had to summarize it, is when you go into a chat forum, and the growth on the astrological body is when you say, oh, yeah, you know, Mars is squaring Pluto this week. And someone gives you two paragraphs about the elaborate T squares, you know, like kites and yodes, and like, you know, a million asteroids, and like, all this stuff, it's going on, and it's like really affecting my chart, and you're like, this transit lasts like a week, you do realize that you wrote something equally long and dramatic about last week's transit, and you're probably will next week. And I feel like, you know, probably most of us have been there. But we also, hopefully, outgrow that when it comes to astrology. Not to diss anyone really, but just, I mean, I laugh because it's like, that's, that's how I was, you know, and maybe like, year one. Year two, a little bit maybe, but you have to grow past. You know, the self-centeredness of astrology, like, everything is about my birth chart, you know, it's like, it's not; your birth chart is this beautiful oracular mantic device, you have to use it all the time. You can appreciate transits without having to link back everything to some kind of step-by-step unfolding path of perfection that's written in your birth chart that you have to be following and checking in on 24/7. I say that because that's what I see every day as a person as an astrologer on social media. This is the kind of rhetoric that I see people espousing, oh, work with this energy. Oh, it's, it's, there's always like a big to-do list, where there's always a real long explanation about why this is really very personal for us. And I think, like learning to be interested in astrology for a variety of reasons, learning to be interested in the gods and the planets and transits for a variety of different reasons, intellectual, spiritual, to learn to observe and see, maybe yes to look at your birth chart, but not only.

This is the same view that Tao Te Ching is encouraging us. Like, don't be striving and so eager and ambitious about everything, like ambition is okay, but remember that self-indulgence is like rotting food and painful growths on the body. Don't make astrology about that. That's not how we grow spiritually. When walking the path of Tao. This is the very stuff that must be uprooted, thrown out left behind. That does not mean that you never look at your birth chart, that it's not important, that there's nothing of self you know, there's nothing relevant to yourself or your own life or journey. It's just let's make astrology about something more. You know how you can tell? Personally, I know how you can tell that this is an issue and a challenge. Because most astrologers cannot make content explicitly talking about the spiritual dimensions of astrology unless they tie it to a transit that will give people interest or their numbers will go down, this series and other series have done talking about the spiritual path of astrology that is not linked to an upcoming transit generally get significantly less views.

But if you're watching this, and you've made it through, this is equally as important to do this. If you like my channel, for example, every day, I do this, without that's not, it's not like five days a week, that's every day for me seven days a week, that is as much a practice for me, as brushing my teeth. I do that twice a day. And I have several spiritual practices that are every day for me that helped me just get back by that campfire somewhere. And tune in and think about life as something more than just what's about to happen, or, you know, obsessing over transits or just letting tons of information stream through me and like manic fashion, scrolling, and clicking. And it's like, you have to step out of that. And if you do that, the most magical things happen with astrology. Astrology comes from divine living archetypal Gods' fields. If you treat them with a kind of spiritual attentiveness, they will start teaching you astrology in ways that you can't learn without that kind of approach. They the these, the gods, so to speak, will reveal things to you and give you an eye for symbolism you were never able to see before. And that comes specifically because you take time to let astrology seep into your bones. And you pair it with self-care and self reflectiveness which is almost always the opposite of self-indulgence. It's really easy for astrology to fall into that place of self-indulgence unless we give ourselves a steady diet of spiritual activities. So not meaning to preach at all, like in terms of like people, you know, oh, you should be doing this. You're not doing this. But it's important. I have to tell myself; this is why I'm here. This is why I'm doing this. What is today all about? I have to do that as a parent. What is this all about? It's about love. It's about presence with my kids. I have to do that with my dogs, for God's sake. This is a living being like, you know, and probably a lot of you don't have to think about things so hard, but, but I do, and that's why it's a practice for me. And I suspect that for many people, it could help to have something like the Tao Te Ching in your life. If you haven't ever read it before, pick up a copy. This edition is the Tarcher Cornerstone edition of the Tao Te Ching translated by Jonathan Star. I really like this edition; it's very accessible for beginners. Hope you guys enjoyed the verses today, and we will see you again tomorrow. All right, take care, everyone. Bye