Ten Things I’ve Learned in 10 Years and 10,000 Charts (Part 9)

Transcript:

0:06
Hi everyone. This is Acyuta-bhava from Nightlight Astrology, and today I am doing a live stream for the ninth part of a series that I've called 10 Things I've Learned in 10 Years and 10,000 charts. So this is the ninth part of a 10 part series that I've been doing. I know a lot of you have been following along with it. So hopefully you enjoy this. And I thought it would be fun to do a live stream and take a look at a new topic in this series on election day here in the US, because it might provide a little bit of spiritual nutrition on a day where it might be very easy to sort of completely lose their minds. So I thought, you know what, let's go ahead. And let's go ahead and talk about something that might feed the soul a little bit on a day like today. So what I'm going to do today is present the ninth part in this series. And just a little overview, in case you haven't looked at any of the previous talks in this series. It was July of this year 2020, that I realised that I had been practising astrology full time professionally for 10 years. And I thought, you know, this would make, it'd be a really interesting time to figure out how many charts I've done. And to sort of reflect on some of the things that I've learned over the past 10 years. So I figured out that I've done somewhere over 10,000 charts, and all different kinds, and in all different settings. I thought, Okay, I'm going to try to let some of the insights that I've gained over 10 years of doing this crystallise. And as I did that, I realised that some of them would make a really fun video series. And so I turned some of them, not all of them, but I turned some of them into this series.

2:22
I've been doing full time astrology for 10 years, every single day of my life. And in addition to creating content, I see clients. And so these insights really come from my client practice. But also, I guess, overall, from the practice of working with a lot of different people and students, and seeing clients and a more mainstream audience that's not even that interested in astrology and how they've engaged with astrology over the years. So my insights are formed primarily from my client practice in this series, but also from that broader experience of being in the astrological world for a long time. Alright, so some of you probably know that in every video in this series, there's been an insight that I've used that's kind of the catchphrase for the talk. So today's ninth part, I've titled, "eliminating selfishness is a step by step process." One of the things that I've noticed over a long time of doing this is that one of the things that dogs people the most. And this is kind of a view from 20,000 feet, just looking over the course of thousands and thousands of clients that I've seen, and so many different readings that I've done, one of the things that I've noticed is that, you know, probably the number one thing that dogs all of us is selfishness. This is, of course, something that most spiritual traditions address. But what I've also noticed is that it's not easy to eliminate selfishness, which is often at the root of a lot of our problems. It's not easy, because there are ways in which we need to attend to our own needs, and validate our own uniqueness and our own interests and desires. But we also have to be careful because most of the time at the root of why we suffer is a level of self absorption, that's not healthy. And so, in watching and observing people, so many people and including myself, it's all given room for me to reflect on my own issues. I've noticed that selfishness is really a huge problem and in watching people deal with it, I've learned a lot also about what may be an effective strategy for dealing with selfishness and some of the ways that selfishness sneaks and tends to take advantage of us. And, and so some of these insights today are about how we can eliminate selfishness but also how to notice when selfishness is creeping in and dragging us back into things that are really going to be like unhealthy or destructive. So one of the things that is important to understand about selfishness and this, of course, is rooted in observations that ancient mystics made. So these are certainly not things that I've just come up with, right. But we get self absorbed, by means of both our accomplishments and our failures. So there's a way in which sometimes people will think of selfishness as something that only happens if we are self absorbed with our self in a negative way, like, I'm so great, or I'm so awesome or poor me or something like that. But the far more pervasive, subtle and destructive form of selfishness is the one that exists in relationship to the everyday, very everyday and mundane level of ups and downs that we experience, for example, every day, self absorption happens by virtue of being completely absorbed in what will happen and whether it will be pleasing to me or not. Will this go well? Will this will this particular outcome occur? And will that make me happy or not? And a lot of the times these outcomes are as they might be as simple as your sports team winning, you know, after you're done with work in the evening, and you and you watch your sports team or something, and you say, Oh, you know, it's like, if they win, then I'll be happy, if they don't, then I'll be upset. But there's lots of other mundane things that that occur, right? Like our kids, and what's happening in their lives, or anything that's happening around us. Everyday, we will get absorbed in into the things happening around us and think that these things all reflect upon me, or they all have a bearing on me and whether or not I'm happy or upset, or whatever. And so when we relate to the world, in terms of how everything that's happening around us impacts us in our state, or our mood, or our happiness, it's a very subtle level of self absorption. And that's the one that we're all dealing with all the time, it's most pervasive, you kind of start from the bottom. And when people hear this right away, they'll get this feeling of like, well, what am I supposed to do be dissociated from the world? And the brief answer to that is no, right? You don't want to be dissociated from the world, but there's a shift of consciousness that has to take place so that we are relating to all of the changing circumstances around us without self interest as the bottom line. And we'll talk about what that how we flip or change that form of consciousness in a little bit.

8:11
The other thing, of course, that we get self absorbed into is, is not only when things go the way that we want them to, or that they don't go how we want them to, I mean, it's easy to be upset or disappointed, or to allow ourselves to feel really thrown off by things when they don't go our way, when they when they don't go the way in which we hope or desire them to go. Like, obviously, that's really gonna kind of throw us off and make us feel really disappointed. But it's also our accomplishments. You know, an accomplishment is a dangerous drug, when something goes our way, when it It happens in just the way we want it to. And we feel so satisfied by it. When we get attached to either the good or the bad, it really ends up we end up receiving the same result at some point, which is, by virtue of being self absorbed in either the good times or the bad times, it becomes very, very difficult to get out of our self absorption to experience any kind of lasting happiness. Instead, we become a victim to the forces of material nature and the fluctuations of karma in the world all around us. And so one of the subtlest ways in which selfishness can really eat at the soul will come in and take hold in our lives is when we get attached to the good or satisfying things. In other words, it's very understandable when someone gets upset, and there's a level of self absorption that exists because something doesn't go the way that we want it to. But it's just as problematic when we get really attached to things going in the way that we exactly. hoped or planned that they would. So we can get absorbed by both our happiness and our suffering as well. You know, it's very easy to get absorbed by our suffering. Again, similar idea. If things have been traumatic or difficult or painful in any area of our life, the suffering is something that we can hold on to and get identified with. And we say, it's my suffering, right? It's, it's somehow these experiences, reflect on and determine who I am, or they assert power over us, right. And on the other hand, the same thing happens with our happiness, we get really absorbed by our optimism, or our positivity or anything else. And then we think, you know, what, what makes me a good person is the fact that I'm happy or that I'm positive, or that I'm funny, or whatever the case might be. So it's very easy for us to get self absorbed, also, by virtue of the things that we suffer or struggle with, or the things that we consider to make us really happy.

11:17
Now, it's an interesting thing that happens, because the same selfish tendencies, transfer over into spiritual life as well, when we start living a spiritual life. Initially, we often take up spiritual practices of one kind or another in order to alleviate our suffering or to improve our happiness. So for example, owning a yoga studio for 10 years, people would come in all the time and say, you know, I'm practising this yoga, or I'm gonna meditate or whatever, because I need to get happier, or I need to heal the suffering, or I need to deal with the wounds. And so there's a way in which even initially, spiritual life can be something that we're using to serve ourselves with. And this can also be really problematic. I can't tell you, you know, over 10 years, how many clients I've seen who come in, and either they're really anxious or concerned about the literal good or bad things that are happening in their life, or even if they've taken to spiritual life, they're still there, there will still be this tendency to say, I practice spiritual life in order to make myself feel happy, or in order to heal the bad things that have happened to me, but "me, me, me" and "I, I, I" is still at the centre. And this is problematic. So it's very easy to frame our spirituality in terms of me, my and I, or me, my and mine. So from the standpoint of ancient astrology, there's two ways of thinking about who we actually are, that can really help us flip the script on the selfish programming that we tend to run.

13:15
From the ancient standpoint, and we're talking about a variety of different schools, and I'm sort of summarising what they have in common in my own words, and that's that our true position, our true ontological position, meaning, who we actually are, is servants, or lovers, two different ways of thinking about the same thing. That who we are, in other words, is an instrument in the hand of the universe or the hand of hands of the Divine or that we are, that we are meant to love and serve others and we are meant to love and serve divinity. Love and serve doesn't mean subservient or servile or, you know, some kind of diminished position within a hierarchy. It's more like the way that you feel when you're in love with someone and you derive more pleasure and satisfaction by demonstrations of your affection, your love, your time, your energy, your your service to them, that you consider yourself someone who is interested in pleasing, the lover, your beloved. And that that is where we derive our sense of identity and real satisfaction or happiness from. It's not I'm at the centre, it's that something other than myself is at the centre. And obviously there are ways in which putting someone or something else in this world at the centre can be self serving, it can sneak back in. There's lots of people who will put a lover at the centre of their lives. And by thinking, Well, I'm going to serve someone else and pour all of my heart and my soul into into that person then then I'll feel loved or then I'll I'll get some sense of value back, you know. But that's not what we're talking about in a spiritual or theological sense. What we're talking about is this feeling that I don't exist apart from the divine hole. And my real purpose is to serve the goal of love in creation, and that I'm here to serve the loving source from which I come. And that, that service when it it starts to preoccupy me, like a lover, I start thinking, How do I please? How do I serve? How do I help? And it's all geared towards something other than ourselves. So that's, that's our place from the standpoint of these different ancient wisdom traditions. And it's really, really hard, as long as we frame our personal happiness, or even our spiritual happiness in terms of what am I getting out of it, it's like a mire that we get stuck in, and it's really, really hard to get out of. And I'm going to explain in a little bit, all of these steps and gradations of selfishness that we can see and how they how they sneak into our lives.

16:38
I want to read you guys a poem in the meantime called "Love Dogs" by Rumi. This poem really illustrates the idea that what makes us happy is our our sense of being a lover to someone or something bigger than ourselves, call it God or the divine or the universe or source.

17:02
One night a man was crying Allah! Allah! His lips grew sweet with praising, until a cynic said, “So! I’ve heard you calling our, but have you ever gotten any response?” The man had no answer to that. He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep. He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls, in a thick, green foliage. “Why did you stop praising?” “Because I’ve never heard anything back.” “This longing you express is the return message.” The grief you cry out from draws you toward union. Your pure sadness that wants help is the secret cup. Listen to the moan of a dog for its master. That whining is the connection. There are love dogs no one knows the names of. Give your life to be one of them.

17:52
I love that poem, because one of the things that it it gets at is that we actually find such deep, deep satisfaction in our longing to please and serve and be connected with God with, with our soul, with the soul of our soul, with our source, with the beloved. And when we see that in other people and in the world, that that's at the essence of every person. Then our sense of happiness and joy is derived our sense of reaching out for something other than ourselves, reaching out to help to serve, to heal, to love, to call out to something other than ourselves. And that that's actually the balm. That's the that's the remedy. And, yes, in doing that we tend to obscure our our own ego, we become, you know, like in the language of Rumi, "listen to the moan of a dog for its master that whining is the connection. There are love dogs, no one knows the names of" and he says, you know, "give your life to be one of them." So, I could use this as a kind of like maybe an analogy. I think that if you've ever seen someone who has given a huge amount of their life, their time, their energy to something other than themselves a cause a craft, you know, a pastime or a hobby, a skill, an art form, a sport, you know, dance, whatever it might be. That what's really, really admirable about that person is not so much what they've done or what they've accomplished, but how deeply they've loved what they've done. And that's what we admire so much is meeting people in our lives who love so deeply something that they do, something that they love, something that they serve, something that moves them and inspires them that takes them outside of themselves and they just commit and give themselves fully to it.

20:11
I've said this before, but we were looking for, you know, when we were kind of looking around to figure out what dog might be best for our family, I was reading about dogs and how there are some dogs that have been bred to do work. There's types of dogs that like to work. And the truth is that we're like, love dogs that like to work for things that we love. We're not really that happy when our lives revolve around, whether I'm happy or not happy, whether I'm healed or not healed, whether I'm good or not good, what you know, whether I'm spiritual or not spiritual, the more that it comes back to ourselves, even in the spiritual world, or the material world, we just, we're just not that happy. But as soon as we find something that we love that's bigger than ourselves, that's other than ourselves, that could exist in the world, or that is transcendental to this world. But it's something other, and we serve, and we love it. And we don't, we don't need anything for ourselves, we don't demand anything from ourselves for doing it, the joy is in the doing of it. That seems to be the secret to happiness, to real lasting happiness, to real love to real connection. And that's what I've seen over 10 years of doing this is that the people, we're all working on selfishness, that selfishness is often a huge part of spiritual life even as much if not more than sometimes in people who are just absorbed in gross material things. Because sometimes it's more subtle and pervasive. And people get even more arrogant, you know, like when I'm doing spiritual things that makes me even better than everyone else. But if the spiritual things we're doing are still bottom line about trying to make me happier, or make me more healed, or make me more wise, or make me me, me, it doesn't do it. It's like a hamster wheel, you just keep going around. People are trying to heal themselves endlessly, improve their faults or flaws endlessly, get calmer, more peaceful, happier, more content endlessly. Because it's a bottomless hole. You know, the soul doesn't find itself in some kind of isolated, pursuit of perfection. It finds itself in the perfection of loving others in the perfection of loving creation. And in the perfection of serving something other and outside of itself, something bigger. We can see intimations of that in the world again, because who are the people that often appeal to us the most, it's the people who really, really love things that they do. And it's contagious, it makes us want to really care and love about something that we do. So you can even see it like that all the time.

23:05
The enemy of servanthood, of being a lover is selfishness. That's the, that's the basic insight that I've seen over 10 years of doing this in myself too, right? Because astrology is such a mirror for the astrologer as well. Now, at this point, people will often bring up this idea, which is that being a servant means to willfully neglect ourselves, our bodies, our health, our mind, our needs, our problems. And that's actually not true. So certainly, sometimes people will get this sense of in order to serve, I have to neglect myself or be hard on myself. But you see how that still comes back to me? When we're saying serve, we're saying you serve people, the only real way to serve people is not out of duty, not out of some sense of having to, I'm doing this because I'm chastising myself or I'm putting myself second and I'm putting you first. I'm putting myself down and you up? No, because that would mean that putting someone else first is, is being done specifically in order to put ourselves second. And when it's done with that kind of mindset, it's still selfish. So we can't serve and love from the standpoint of doing it because we're trying to subdue our own egos or, or put ourselves in our places or something like that, that would still be selfish, that would still have the underlying self centeredness behind it. So real love and real service is not anything that neglects the self. It's not anything that neglects our own soul. Instead, it's something that the soul gets absorbed into. You can't love unless you're absorbed into the experience of love. You can't give and give joyfully and give anything that's a value unless that thing is coming through you in a way that that's edifying, that actually makes you feel good as you're giving it. So when we really give, when we really love, it feels good to us. And that's why it's not something that neglects ourselves.

25:18
Now that doesn't mean that it's always easy to serve. It doesn't mean that serving doesn't sometimes involve sacrifice. But the idea here is that we're not trying to kill the ego, there's still too much ego in that, right. The ego becomes a servant, it becomes a joyful participant in the loving and serving of things and people outside of ourselves above other other beings. In fact, there are many ways in which we also have to serve ourselves in order to serve others well, for example, our body, our mind, our words, our actions, all of the things that we do every day. This body in this mind are like a temple for for the soul, sanctuary for the soul. And if we don't take time to serve our body, by taking care of it, serve the mind by taking care of what we put into it, serve the heart and serve the mouth by having pleasant conversations with people and loving exchanges of words with people, there's so many ways in which in order for this body and this mind, that houses the soul temporarily, to really help us be the best servants, we have to serve and tend to it. So self-care is not selfish when we know that the goal behind our self care is to be the best lover that we can be. For example, I can't be a good dad, to my little girls, if I don't get enough sleep, because I get grouchy in the morning, right? Or I can't be the best dad, to my girls, unless I'm taking care of my mental and emotional health. But we know why we're doing it, right. I'm not doing all of this, because I just need some "me time" and like, put the kids over there. No, I can derive joy from being a dad, every single day, even when it's hard. But it's gonna be a lot harder, if I don't take a little time to also care for myself. We have to fill up our own cup, you know, so that we have things to give, because we're not perfect beings, we don't have endless resources of love to give because we're working on it, right? We're working on the cultivation of love. So we do have to stop and like, make sure we're filling up our own tank, so to speak.

27:49
But we have to understand why we're doing that. Why are we doing that? We're doing that because I'm a servant to my kids, I'm a servant to my clients, I'm a servant to all of the things that I love and care about. And when we have that attitude, then taking care of ourselves becomes part of the service of our life, it becomes part of the way in which we love. We're included in that. In other words, our own upkeep has to be included in that. But our real joy and happiness is derived from thinking I'm so glad that I feel good because I have more to give, I have more to serve with. And so we we learn how to take care of ourselves in relation to the goal of service. If we serve these places within ourselves well, our mind our body, etc, then we also become happy because this is also the place within which the Spirit dwells. If I have a clean mind, if I have a clean heart, if I have a body that feels healthy, and well, then the Spirit of God and the presence of my own soul comes out more it's less covered over because we've we've polished it. We've polished the coverings of the material, right? And then you can see it in people that are like that there's a luminescence there's something in the sound of a person's voice. There's a feeling of goodness. For example, one of my favourites with my kids is Mr. Rogers. And when you look at Mr. Rogers, there's something about him that is very gentle, right. And I'm not saying he didn't have problems, but I don't know what they were but I'm just saying, he's a human. But there's something very gentle and kind and present and sincere. You can just feel that in people who are it just shines like that. That's the presence of the soul, the spirit and of source in a person, and usually a person doesn't get there, just because that's how they are, they have to like, take care of themselves, and then that indwelling Spirit is there, and it's feeding their interactions. And so if we also take care of ourselves, as though my body, my mind is a temple that houses this holy presence, then, you know, typically the reciprocation that we get in return is that we feel that that presence within us, and that is where our joy is. And we don't feel it going, Oh, I'm so great. We feel it as thank you for this presence, I feel your presence, and a generic way of talking about God or spirit or the soul or the the beloved, thank you for being here, I feel you that you're here. That's what we want. That's why we take care of ourselves. It's not because well, I just need some me time and I have to feel good about me.

31:00
We clean up the temple of our own lives, specifically, because it is a house of the holy and when that presence is there, it is its own reward to dwell in the presence of that spirit. Now I wanted to talk about some of the stages of selfishness that I've noticed. And these are things that I've noticed within myself and within my clients, and they're different that I would say that it's almost like, different ways in which we move through the experience of being selfish. And again, because in every turn we take the world tells us that you are at the centre you are I are at the centre, and that your happiness is the most important. And this is, you know, all the way from advertising and consumerism, to the way that we conceive of the pursuit of happiness in the world in general, through acquisition of things and people and all kinds of things that we pursue, because we think that they'll please us. And very little do we think about actually, I'm a love dog, and I'm not happy, unless I'm pulling a little bit of a load here, you know, and what is the load the load is to loving and serve. And I get a lot of joy out of that. And there's not a lot of big name behind that. You know, there's far more love dogs that nobody knows the names of, then, than those we do.

32:35
Now, here's the gradations that I've noticed, one is first just recognising that one is selfish, or that one has selfish tendencies. It's like anything else, when you, you start to figure out, I've got to serve something bigger than myself, it's usually because you recognise that I'm kind of absorbed in myself, and that that's not doing much for me. So it starts there, recognising that one is selfish. The next thing that comes is that we tend to talk about the struggle with selfishness, in a selfish manner. So, for example, one of the things that I've observed in social media over the years is that people will move from maybe being really self absorbed to having some kind of spiritual transformation experience. And then they might become really self absorbed about their selfishness by writing a lot of confessional posts. Well, I was going through this, but I've been doing so much healing, and I'm getting so much better. And so there's still like, a way in which our selfishness will be on display in terms of the pride we take in addressing our selfishness. And I'm not saying that that's a bad thing. I'm just talking about like gradations that seem to exist, when we start dealing with selfishness. I'm selfish, and then I become aware of my selfishness and sort of selfishly struggling with my selfishness, right? That's like, and I think is really human, we all do it. And then we start taking some degree of pride and becoming less selfish, right. And then the next thing that happens, these are not in any particular order, but we will start to become annoyed by people who are selfish, that person is so selfish, right? And it annoys us and it irritates us. And usually that's happening at the same time that we are kind of becoming more aware of right our own selfishness and trying to address it, we start having a heightened sensitivity to other people who are selfish and unaware of it. And then we take some degree of pride in being able to recognise it and point it out, and these are all of course, underlying you can see how the selfishness is still there as a baseline, right? And I see this in myself still today. It's not like I'm over this or something. But what happens is something starts to occur, where you start to recognise that talking about your own faults all the time, even if you're trying to fix them, talking about them all the time doesn't feel good. You start to recognise like, Oh, if selfishness doesn't feel good, and I don't like the way the world sort of mirrors back to me when I'm talking about selfishness, even if it's in a sort of heroic overcoming sense, it still doesn't feel good. So you start noticing that maybe you don't want to talk as much about your own faults. And maybe you also start to recognise that it doesn't even feel good to talk about other people's selfishness that there's just starts to be a way in which any talk about the self that the self focus, whether you see it in others, or you see it in yourself, and you want to address it, or you want to fix it, or you're judging it, all of it starts to become less appealing. Just generally. As we go along, there's a stage I've noticed as well, that happens when we start to feel internally embarrassed about our own selfishness, we become more aware of it on an internal level. And then we have to start dealing with almost like a feeling of embarrassment about it. And the embarrassment is healing. But also, it's very tempting to stay in that stage and just start trying to do good things or to try to act to compensate for that embarrassment by doing things. So we internally we feel embarrassed, we try to compensate for it by doing things. For example, when I was a kid, there was this kid I knew that went to my church, his parents got divorced. And his dad had been a really, really selfish human being. Just I happen to know the story because he was my friend. And as a way of trying to compensate for that selfishness and the inner embarrassment that he felt would like buy my friend a lot of things. And in that way, he was trying to address the inner shame or guilt or embarrassment of having done something really, really selfish. But he was doing it in a way that was still trying to bring the attention back to himself. Look at what a great dad I am. I've got you these things, right. So sometimes there's this way where we start to compensate for an inner feeling of being really self centred by trying to do things externally, kind of like a Karma Yoga like, nice thing to do. But where's the intention coming from? It's coming from this feeling of embarrassment and shame and self focus and wanting to like, correct that, then it's still really about us. It's a very subtle thing that I've noticed that I deal with. I can even see it in my, in my, in my daughter's I was just thinking about, about this yesterday, I took I stole one of my stole one of my daughter's pieces of Halloween candy, and she saw me eating it. And she she looked at me and she just turned into like the devil. Her fists shaking, she was like, You don't take my candy! That is not good! You're bad Daddy! She got really pissed off. And I came out and I said I was sorry. I'm like, I'm sorry, GiGi, I was just stealing one of your candies, because they looked really good. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have I should have asked you if I could have had one. And, and, you know, she, um, she was not having it. She was she's like, done, and just really, really mad. And so I was like, Oh, I'm really sorry, Gigi and and I walked away. And then she came back over really, really sweet. She came back over. And she gave me she gave me like a little hug in the kitchen, and she was like it's okay, Daddy. It was really funny because she was being sweet, right? And she definitely felt bad for getting so pissed off at me. What was really funny was that she was like, So I can still have candy, right? I can still have my candy? I thought, why are you worried? Like why would she be worried about that? You know? And she was like, Well, because I just got so mad at you so you're not going to take away my candy are you? So it's really this funny moment where you know she was coming over because she partly realised that she had completely overreacted and been, you know, mean to me, especially when I was trying to apologise for taking your candy. But then she was also concerned that because she had like really overreacted that she would get her candy taken away from her. So kids are like this, and adults are like this too, in some ways, we never really grow out of it, right? There's a way in which, when we feel bad about something inside a lot of the times, it's a behaviour that doesn't have as much to do with the other person, but has more to do with how we feel about ourselves and what what kinds of rewards or punishments we think might be given to us, by the universe or by others, by virtue of the good or bad way in which we're acting or behaving. And that internal embarrassment with selfishness is sometimes like that. It's something that has to be overcome by when we feel embarrassed about our own selfishness that we recognise it, and that we that we are not tempted by the desire to immediately do something to compensate for it to make ourselves feel better. It's almost always better if we're feeling embarrassed by our own behaviour to sit, think about it. Think about the other person that might have been affected or think about how our selfishness may have impacted others or whatever the case might be. And then think about what we can really genuinely do from the heart to make up for it or to change something and people can feel the difference in intention. Anyway. So along the way, though, what we're learning through these gradations is that selfishness doesn't feel good. And being genuinely more concerned with the well being of others, or with something that we care about. For me, for example, it's my wife, it's my kids, it's my family. But it's also Krishna. It's also you know, it's astrology, it's my clients, it's my students.

42:01
And these, these are my life and soul. Not me, I'm like a beggar. You know, that's how it feels, to me sometimes, like I'm really impoverished, without the people that I love. And without the ability to love things that are outside of myself, I'm really alone. And without much, you know, that my real wealth is in what I have, that I really love astrology, I really, really love astrology, you know, and that feeds my soul, because I can pour myself into it and try to be a good astrologer, and a good teacher, and I can try to use astrology to serve others in the world, and to bring them something that also may be worth serving. And I think we're all like that, I think we're all like that, that we need something bigger than ourselves, to serve and to love. And when we really start caring about something outside of ourselves, and it becomes the love and affection and presence that we pour into caring for those things becomes the source of our of our happiness, finding ways to serve others or something larger than oneself. And I think it has to start with the soul and with Source. Because it's very easy if it's not if the if the bottom line of service and of, of loving isn't soul and Source. In other words, at the heart of it, if there's not the desire to serve the whole to be to find our place as a servant of the all, it's very easy to serve things in the world that can't reciprocate. So that's why the, that's why in the teachings of in whether you're looking at bhakti yoga, or Christianity or even some of the elements of selfless service that you'll find in, in Buddhism, through the Bodhisattvas, and so forth. The thing that we serve, is ultimately beyond comprehension. We're serving the love itself. In bhakti, we're connecting with God that has to be at the centre and when that's at the centre, then from that flows out, the way in which we can serve in the world, and the things that we can serve in the world that will be connected to that. It's very hard, in other words, to say, Well, I'm going to serve and it's just going to be, you know, whatever, something that I that I pick, that I pour myself into, but it has no it has no connection to the reality of the soul or to divinity. Those things will eventually run out of their appeal or their ability to reciprocate. Just in the same way that if you haven't found the wellspring of divinity in your own heart, and you think, well, I'm just going to pour myself into pleasing a lover, that if both you and someone you're dating, for example, don't have that as the centre priority of the relationship, the ability to serve, a person runs out, you know, the ability to serve, the soul can't run out because the soul is endless. So that's the idea. We can't serve the soul in others, or we can't serve the soul and spirit of in others in the world, unless at the root of our practice is service of spirit and soul. And this is why you find that all of our great luminaries are people who they serve other people in the world, like think about Thich Nhat Hanh, or the Dalai Lama. These are people who serve, you know, who do a lot of philanthropy in the world, there, they are great benefics in the world, but at the centre of their lives is the daily practice of connecting with source it may not be called that in each tradition, but you know, Thich Nhat Hanh daily walking, or the Dalai Lama's practices of Buddhism, those core practices where we go, we go within, they have to be the cornerstone in order for that selflessness to become a reality and find its way into loving and serving others.

46:52
That's why spiritual practice, you've heard me say it a million times, but that's why it really has to be the cornerstone of our lives, if we want to start learning how to transcend the traps of our own selfishness. Finding ways to serve others or something larger than ourselves becomes a constant endeavour and has to be coupled with a spiritual practice someplace where we can go to actually draw on the right resources to be able to serve the right things. So we also get to a level where there's some feeling of like, even having a spiritual practice. And even there's even subtler levels of pride that can creep in, you know, all along the way. taking pride or feeling good, like, Oh, I'm such a good servant, or, oh, I really care about these things, or, oh, I really love these things, or Oh, I really love. You know, I'm so great because I'm so passionate about things. Even if it even if that is true. There's these very subtle levels, I noticed this within myself a lot, because I think, you know, one of the things I pride myself on is like, how much I love astrology, or how much I love bhakti yoga, or whatever the case might be. But if I catch myself feeling that way, you know, kind of prideful about the things that I love. I noticed that there's a spirit of jealousy that can accompany that or a spirit of comparison. So the pride even as we're growing spiritually, we're noticing real advancement spiritually, so to speak. Pride can keep sneaking back in.

48:46
The last thing I guess I'll add is that serving something other than ourselves is a lifelong process and a lifelong work. And I don't think it happens in a really healthy way, until we've cultivated a spiritual practice every day where we have to go inward and serve the indwelling Spirit soul. That's, that's a really important one. That takes it that takes a kind of commitment. And the commitment to serving and creating an inner life is sometimes in austerity. Like, it doesn't always feel good and you have to have you have to have a kind of discipline and perseverance and you have to do it even when you don't want to do it. But that's also because we're the self, the selfish part of ourselves is very strong and constantly wants to take the reigns. And so part of spiritual practice and part of learning how to serve as much as I've experienced so far, also involves having to say, you know, I have to learn how to control my mind and I have to learn how to subdue the part of me that always just wants to rebel and go do my own thing. And, and some of that is a sacrifice and there's work and there's discipline involved with that, which is another thing we can go ahead and take pride in, right? But it's so it doesn't always feel great to learn how to be a servant. And there's a way in which the ego has to learn how to submit or be more submissive. And that power struggle can bring up a lot for people. And so talking about a subject like this, you'll usually get at least, you know, a handful of reactions that are like, no one's telling me what to do, you know, or you know, just kind of reactions like that. And you'll get that, even if you're like, open to what we're talking about today, you'll still find that reaction, and it'll come up in yourself, as you're going along, I don't want to meditate today, or I don't want to pray today, or I don't want to journal or take time to take care of my body or connect with God in whatever way that I do. I don't want to do that today. Because I can do what I want, I don't have to always do that. It's like water over time, devoting ourselves to a spiritual practice and to serving something larger than ourselves. We have to keep coming back over and over and over again to it, it's like water washing away the jagged edges of a rock. At first, it feels like a power struggle. And eventually the ego is we're not struggling with the ego, the ego has a role to play and its role is to be a joyful servant. So that process, though, for many people it's very triggering for people because of how we're taught to see and understand our autonomy or agency, our will, our power, our pride, you know, our happiness. It brings up a lot. And it's also it tends to bring up power relationships, because the ego is learning to serve the soul, the lifetime, the body, the karma is all starting to come into service to the soul, and to Source and that is something that requires relational intelligence, because the soul has to relate to the body to the lifetime to the people around us. And that's a relational process, in other words, and how power differentials exist within relationships is a part of figuring that out figuring out how to be a servant. But it's almost never that. People people will often think that being a servant has something to do with being a pushover, or being weak or degrading oneself or something like that, and that's not the kind of service that we're talking about. And usually, those are the gripes of the ego, not wanting to learn how to serve. And the truth is that you don't just you're not just like born ready and able to be a servant. You know, it's that's the point of spiritual life. So it takes cultivation and practice and a great deal of patience and compassion and mercy and forgiveness. As we go along, are needed if the ego is not going to perceive this as a You submit, stop being selfish, because you're worthless, right? If that's but think about that, if that's our binary, if it's like, I'm either the I'm either the master of everything or I'm worthless, you know, that's the the voice of selfishness speaking, I'm either everything or I'm nothing. The servants position is I get my value in my worth, based on what what I'm able to give and serve and the way I'm able to use my energy, my time, my resources to enhance love in the world, and love in my own heart and love in others. That's how I derive my satisfaction based on my ability to serve those goals. And, and they come of their own accord, you know, they just they come naturally by virtue of being loving and giving love. Anyway, this one was harder for me to put together because it's a vast topic, but I wanted to at least take one video out of this series to talk about just how much I see people struggling with selfishness and how I how much I've noticed over 10 years in so many charts that the people who are the happiest are the people who have found ways of gently helping their ego to become servant of the soul, and their lifetimes gradually come into more and more service and love for things outside of them. And that these people, these people in particular, usually have a more or less regular spiritual practice. And these are people who take care of themselves, they're not flagellating themselves, or however that said. So I think that's something that I've noticed over a lot of years of doing this.

55:25
Alright, that's what I've got for today. I hope that you guys enjoyed this talk. Hopefully, again, it's been like a good antidote to the amount of stress that's in the air today, with it being election day here in the US. I'll give you one simple example of how I'm handling the election tonight. Most of us have someone that you know, we want to see win, or that we want to see lose, or whatever the case might be. And, although I can't deny that part of my experience, I'm not going to like try to pretend that I don't have those feelings. My my practice and my prayer practice today, which I start my mornings with, one of the things that I prayed was, that this, the result tonight isn't about me. That, that whatever, that whatever happens, doesn't come back to me somehow. And that, for example, that if it doesn't go the way that I want it to, that I don't get grumpy, and act like a shitty Dad. So just that prayer, help me to accept the results of today. Understanding that it's not, it's not really about me, and, and then help me to serve in whatever way is best given whatever the results are. And those are, those are prayers that I've learned through the Bhakti tradition. And those are the kinds of prayers that I would recommend that people consider going into a night where there's a lot on the line for everyone, everyone's you know, maybe feeling really, it's like, the Super Bowl politics or something. So everyone has this really intense like, I'm everything is going to be made or everything is going to be broken based on what happened. And there's a way in which there's real consequences that come from what happens but just try to consider that state of acceptance and being like, my role is to serve and to love, regardless of what happens, and just see how that feels. Maybe that'll be helpful for you. Alright, so that's what I've got. I hope you guys are having a great day.

57:56
I should share with you all because you're all a lot of you are kind of like my community at this point. You know, I share a lot of time with you guys. So my mom, my both my mom and her partner were diagnosed with COVID-19. And my mom's partner is in the hospital on oxygen right now. And and my mom's sick with covid at home, though she's not doing as bad as he was because he needed to be hospitalised. So but last night, you know, he was admitted into the hospital. And you know, my mom's really scared. And so I'm not really feeling completely myself today, to be honest with you. I'm feeling a little sad. And I just wanted to share that with everybody because yeah, I could use your prayers and so can my mom and her partner if you have any time throw one up for them. My mom's name is Mary and her partner's name is Jeff so I'm hoping that Jeff recovers and yeah, just dealing with a little bit of a heavy heart today so I appreciate you all for being patient with me because usually I think I have a little bit more energy and zip behind my talks. But hopefully this got some good things across in any way and hopefully you know, the the incredibly dramatic astrology of this of this month leaves us all having learned a lot and and grown a lot as a result. So all right, you guys have a good day. And we will see you again tomorrow have got some more cool content on the way Oh, and don't forget that my new class Ancient Astrology for the Modern Mystic starts on November 14, there's still room if you want to sign up, check it out on my website and feel free to email me if you have any questions about the course. The earlybird rate is in effect all the way up until the first day of class. So you only have like I guess like 11 days left to use the earlybird rate. There's payment plan there's need based tuition if you are struggling with COVID. Okay, that's what I've got. Take it easy Everyone, bye.