The Tao Te Ching For Astrologers: Verses 11 & 12

Transcript:

Hey everyone, this is Acyuta-bhava from Nightlight Astrology and today we are taking a look at another passage from the Tao Te Ching as a part of my series on the Tao Te Ching for astrologers. So, I hope you guys have been enjoying this series. If you are new to it, you don't have to watch them in order, you can really watch any episode of the series out of order. But if you want to know more about the series, why I'm doing it some of the history of the Tao Te Ching, go back to the first episode in this series. And I also highly recommend the version, the addition of the Tao Te Ching that I'm using comes from the translation of Jonathan star through the Tarcher Cornerstone edition. So I like Tarcher, they are the publishing imprint that published my own book. And their Cornerstone edition series is wonderful. And this is another It's a wonderful book to have as a desk reference. So I hope you guys will pick it up. And we can make sure we are giving all due credit to where the particular verses that I'm reading come from, I also put it up on the screen for you. So that two verses at a time, so that you can read along, if you are watching on a TV, it might be small to read, if you're on say a small tablet or a phone or something, but I know some people end up projecting this on their TV and that way, you can read along with if you care too. So today we are taking a look at a couple of verses here.

So today we are looking at verses 11 and 12. And I will read the verses as always. I read them through and then once and then I go back and read through a second time providing some reflection, and really trying to give you a sense of how some of these teachings and verses connect for me as an astrologer, which I find, you know, hugely helpful. This is a book that I read pretty regularly a text that I read before I make content for all of you so hopefully you'll find those reflections meaningful. Verse 11: "Wu is nothingness, emptiness, non existence. 30 spokes of a wheel all joined at a common hub. Yet, only the hole at the centre allows the wheel to spin. Clay is moulded to form a cup, yet only the space within allows the cup to hold water. Walls are joined to make a room it only by cutting out a door in a window can one enter the room and live there. Thus when a thing has existence alone, it is mere dead weight. Only when it has wu does it have life."

And then verse 12. The five colours blind the eye, the five tones deafen the ear. The five flavours dulled the palate, racing hunting and galloping about only disturb the mind. wasting energy to obtain rare objects only impedes one's growth. So the sage is led by his inner truth and not his outer eye. He holds to what is deep and not what lies on the surface. Some really good verses here today." Let's go back and we'll read through both of them again. And then the second time I'm just going to offer you some reflections on the verse as they as I think they pertain to astrology and some crossover between the philosophy of ancient astrologers "Wu is nothingness, emptiness non existence 30 spokes of a wheel all joined at a common hub. Yet only the hole at the centre allows the wheel to spin. Clay is moulded to form a cup. Yet only the space within allows the cup to hold water. Walls are joined to make a room yet only by cutting out a door and a window can one enter the room and live there. Thus, when a thing has existence alone, it is near dead weight. Only when it has whoo does it have life."

This is really interesting. I'm reminded, you know a lot of the times some of the experiences or the philosophical statements of the Tao Te Ching, make sense to me through experiences that I've had in my life. And I remember one time I was in an Ayahuasca ceremony which is formed a long stretch of my spiritual development, I guess you could say. And I had a ceremony where I was I use it was the funniest thing. There was outerspace imagery and I it's hard to describe what an Ayahuasca experience is like. But the visionary state is so strong that you often feel like you're losing your sense of ego, or who you are, you're just absorbed in these visionary landscapes and you just become them. So there was a space where I sort of was becoming a black hole, or it was like a black hole that I was observing, but then the feeling of being sucked into it, and losing, I don't know if consciousness is the right word, but going into this void. And I remember that it wasn't scary, because there was nothing to be afraid of. It wasn't hell it was, it was just maybe the most pure, simple experience that I've ever had have some kind of state of wu, some nothingness or emptiness. And I can't even really say that I was there to reflect upon it.

The next thing that I remember experiencing was, you know, this just just gigantic birth of like a galaxy, or some life sort of exploding outward from this kind of zero point. And I remember thinking to myself, of course, the creation and emptiness are so intimately engaged with each other. And if I reflect on why people turn to astrology every day, I think it's very similar. The planets tell us the story of the unfolding of energies in creation. But they often come from an inherent feeling of emptiness, that we're uncomfortable with. A lot of the times what differentiates in my mind really good astrology from, or at least I should say, the right intention for how we use astrology for maybe a not so good one has to do with how closely we've gotten to know that state of emptiness or how comfortable we are with its existence. You know, when people are really uncomfortable with emptiness, stillness, quiet. Even when people are uncomfortable, it feels like there's a lack of purpose or something to do. There's a restlessness, you know, and then we turn to astrology, we'll see what's going to happen, you know, tell me what, what is the cosmic news? Where are the energies moving, what will happen, because we're addicted to the happenings.

And it's a funny thing, how, if we bring something like meditation, or prayer, or quiet time, or even a walk in nature, into our lives, we fundamentally start becoming okay with quiet, which is very close, like a cousin to emptiness, I think. And because it's relatively quiet, it's relatively empty or something. And then when we approach the planets, and they have something to say, there is some space that exists within us that can actually appreciate what's happening. And it's a different thing to appreciate what's happening to appreciate, reflect upon the planetary movements, because there's some space we've created within which to relate to them, as opposed to approaching the planets and the transits every day, because they're because we're addicted to activity, because we're fundamentally scared of that empty space.

So I remember when I wrote an essay, and the essay was published in a book, and the New York Times reviewed the book, and the the, the reviewer actually took a moment. He didn't like the book, it was a collection of essays about psychedelic experiences. It was published in 2008 or something. And he actually took a section from my essay and ripped on it. I mean, just really made fun of what I had written. And what I had written was about the black hole story. I had written about seeing the juxtaposition of black holes and nothingness and creation emerging from it as this very powerful experience that changed my life. And he was like, wu, man psychedelics, you know, like, and he made fun of it. And at the time, I had felt very high on myself, just being honest. Not every day, not like 24/7 but I was feeling Pretty high that I had my first essay published in a book. And then I read that review. And it was like the whole wind, everything just got sucked out of me. And I happen to be reading the Tao Te Ching at the time. And I read this verse. And I remember specifically thinking to myself, it's the same reason the Tao Te Ching talks about being careful about being puffed up, because it inevitably leads to having the wind sucked out of you. Well, I don't think the critic was right. I thought it was a good essay. But what I appreciated about what he said was how quickly it sucked the air back out of me and brought me back to that state of emptiness that was a fundamental part of what I had written about. And I realised what I had written about it was more important to stay close to what I had written about than to take pride in what I received, for what I had written about.

And it was a simple, pretty youthful lesson, I guess, about arrogance, and about emptiness and the importance of emptying ourselves purposefully, deliberately, so that we can experience things. And when I emptied myself, and I reread his criticism, I experienced the person writing, and a person perceiving. And I could appreciate his perspective. And I didn't take it personally. And it was interesting, it was an interesting experience to have, as opposed to one that was harmful to my ego, just you know, a day or two previously. So this emptiness is very important. And this is why I believe, unless you create a practice of emptiness in your life, if you're studying astrology, you're probably not going to get the most out of the transits.

Let's return to verse 12. "The five colours blind the eye, the five tones deaf in the ear, the five flavours doll, the palate, racing hunting, and galloping about only disturbed the mind. wasting energy to obtain rare objects only impedes one's growth." So the sage is led by his inner truth, and not his outer eye holds to what is deep and not what lies on the surface. It's interesting that I have the experience. Again, I usually understand these things by comparing them to experiences. I went perfume shopping for my wife for Christmas. And this is what the story that came to my mind while I was reading this verse and preparing my notes for today, so you get to hear it. So I went, and I went to Nordstrom in the mall, because they have lots of different perfumes, you can smell. And then I actually also went to another place that was like, I don't know what it was called. Like, it was like a perfume mania type of place. And I was like, smelling lots of different things. And there was something you could I don't remember what it was something you could smell like maybe a little flask of coffee beans or something. I don't remember what it was. There was something you could smell in between to cleanse your palate. I didn't do this. I didn't do this. And to be fair, like I didn't really it wasn't that I was like defiantly, like I'm not gonna do that was sort of that I was ignorant. I didn't really know I was supposed to. And I don't like sales associates like hovering over me. Like I have a hard time thinking and then I ended up making weird decisions. So, so I was trying to handle I just do my own thing. But then you know, of course, I wasn't cleansing my palate. And I finally chose a perfume for my wife that I went out to the car you know, and I was like, sitting there realising this my mistake, like suddenly I realised I don't even know if I could smell any like anything big by the end. And I suddenly realised that I should have been cleansing my palate and like I couldn't I wasn't probably having a really discerning sense of smell by the end of it and God knows if I even picked a perfume that I like. My wife loves it when I pick things that I like to smell on her so and I do the same for her when she picks out things that she likes to smell on me. It always makes me happy to wear that.

So I was reflecting on that because you It turns out she ended up liking it. It wasn't a bad pick. But it also wasn't the one I remembered. You know, so I was like, Oh, that's interesting. I was right when I realised that my palate was like really dulled. The five colours blind the eye. The five tones deaf in the ear, the five flavours dulled the palate, racing hunting, galloping about only disturbed the mind wasting energy to obtain rare objects only impedes one's growth. Speaking of going out to Nordstrom and getting perfume. But what I like about this is that it's saying something about, look, if we want to taste things, smell things, touch things that are really deep, really deeply satisfying. We have to be careful not to overly saturate our senses. If we want wisdom and truth, we have to be careful that we don't follow a million things about because just like the perfume experience that I had, my sense of truth, my sense of what is good or right or pure will fade quickly. And maybe we get lucky. But you know, sometimes we're not going to get lucky and it's possible we'll have wasted a lot of time trying to obtain rare or precious things that actually we have the quality of which will be very low because we've exhausted ourselves and trying to obtain something and exhaustion isn't really the best place through which to trust your taste.

The sages lead by inner truth and not outer eye holds to what holds to what is deep, not what lies on the surface. By to sum it up with astrology. One of the reasons I believe that we do astrology is so that we can savour experience, and the multi dimensionality of experience itself that the planetary transits always reflect. It is hard to do that if we don't have some regular inviting of emptiness into our lives. And if we are exhausting our senses all the time, both of which tend to be symptoms of people who are sort of addicted to astrology, rather than using astrology as a reflective medium. I hate to say it, because I'm not at all trying to be a jerk. And this is not meant for anyone listening to this. But I suspect that's why, you know, 1/10 of the amount of people tend to watch these spiritual focused videos compared to the big transit talks that I do. And I'm not trying to act superior, I know that probably sounds like a really big because I understand it, you don't have a lot of time. And sometimes you don't want to hit sit and listen to the Tao te Ching and you just don't have enough time to listen to everything. Again, anyone listening to this, as you know, probably not included in that criticism.

But as a Social Media Creator who makes content like this, the times where we reflect on why we do what we're doing as astrologers get generally about 1/10 the amount of clicks and views as those that simply report on the news. And that's not just me, that's something that I know many other spiritually focused astrologers struggle with. So that's just part of it. Similarly, at the yoga studio, we had yoga studio for a long time. If you offer classes on meditation, they are 1/10 as full as a very sweaty exercise driven vinyasa class. It's just part of our life is to stay busy. And yet, we don't want the planets to just be part of our busyness. it dulls our senses. It lack of emptiness, deliberate, intentional emptiness, emptying ourselves out, dulls our ability to really hear what the planets are saying. So I hope you guys enjoy this don't mean to sound pedantic here at the end, just my honest thoughts, things that I work on within myself too. All the time. I'm addicted to activity just like everybody else. Just look at how busy the colours in my room are. Oh, but anyway, I hope you guys are having a great day, and that you find this series useful and interesting. And until next time, we'll see you again. Bye.