I’ve always had a draw towards optimization, efficiency, effectiveness, and the pragmatic. If you tell me something, I would think, “how is this useful?” or “what’s the utility?” or “how do we actually do something with this?”
I’m a lover of the practical. What’s the point of theory, if we can’t live into it. And I have loved being in control because too me it is fun to challenge limitations, push boundaries, and touch a sense of awe in what can emerge creatively. For example, jumping off a cliff on a snowboard into a pile of powder, charging downhill on a mountainbike, and learning to fall when things don’t go so well in those moments! (you can see how creatively responding with your body would be helpful here).
Clearly, I’ve also seen it’s downsides since in my experience, whatever I’ve attempted to control, well, there are simply things we cannot account for, particularly as with other people in our relationships! Can anyone relate?
I have been wondering, why is it that life shows up as it does for us?–sometimes in heartache and sometimes in utter beauty and synchronicity. I’ve been contemplating this concept of dharma, and in my contemplation, I’ve begun to notice how frustrated I’ve been with life in the past.
In my own narrow-mindedness, not that this is bad, I just could only see what I was seeing. Life has that quality in which we can only see what we can see. And I do believe we try our best. Either way, what we cannot see can hold us back or it can empower us.
Yet, our dharma unfolds. In other words, people and circumstance keep showing up in some kind of cosmic orchestration that is beyond our control. I know this because of the close relationships I’ve had with people I’ve loved so deeply that it has felt like we know each other from long ago, like we’re meant for each other. And yet, somehow, some of those relationships didn’t last just when I thought they’d never end.
In life, there is an unknown, and I see this unknown now as the purpose of our growth, learning and evolution within the mystery. We have been birthed into this mystery with a set of conditions, genetics, relationships, family, ethnicity, nationality, social structure, etc., and we are here on this Earth in our bodies. This is our dharma. There’s not much changing that except how we relate to it with our awareness actions, and responses/choices. This is our karma. Much is beyond our control, but karma is within our reach.
Playing into this idea, I can see the purpose of our uncertainty. It seems to evoke a deeper surrender into something bigger.
Can you imagine if you knew everything anyway?–when you would be getting that new job, when that new friend or partner would be coming into your life, or when you would finally be getting it right. Wouldn’t life lose its flair–its excitement just a bit? Would we learn anything? I’m not sure, maybe we would just know everything so there’s nothing to learn.
I can recount my time of wanting to speed things up, to know it all, to just get there. I have been antsy with receiving my desires! Yet, there they are, just coming in their own timing. There are many times looking back knowing what I know know about trusting life’s timing, that would have helped so much. I could have relaxed into life more knowing what phase, season, cycle, or timing I was truly in.
Just like you wouldn’t push or rush an oak tree to blossom, you wouldn’t do that with yourself now would you?! ;O Oh, man have I, but there is a time to grapple with wisdom, and a time to rest into it.
When I began to relax more into “divine timing”, life could resume a natural rhythm. I began trusting my own bio-rhythm, so to speak.
When I had my first Astrology reading while living in Thailand, I felt like a coconut fell on my head. I was dumfounded at how these “signs” and “archetypes” seemed to be alive in me. What did it all mean? I have been trying to answer that question for nearly 10 years in my utter fascination with its accuracy or moreover its way of supporting my expanding awareness.
Yet, there has still been this mechanism in me that wanted to grasp for the truth and know the answers to my life, to unlock its mystery. Maybe I’ve been close, or at least think I have been, yet hey, what do I really know in the grand scheme of it all? In either case, and despite my true inability to know it all, I do know this: Astrology has helped me expand my awareness and trust life’s uncertainty. It has helped me trust “my process” of bearing fruits and becoming aware of how to provide better water, nutrients, soil, and fertilizer.
Honestly, that has been invaluable because I have felt a lot of distrust in my old days! And I see that distrust related to my ability to perceive life and my experience from a narrow lens. I’ve certainly been limited by own awareness, as we all can be.
Why I share all of this is because I want to express my love for this spiritual technology and consciousness science. It has been a compass for navigating my inner world with greater ease and trust. And in those times where I felt the most uncertain, I was able to watch this grand clock gesture me back towards honoring the natural rhythm and timing of my life like you would honor a tree’s timing as it matures in fertile soil. We may not be able to change much about what life throws at us and even what our own maturation process ends up looking like, but we can certainly change our relationship to the experience along the journey.
Here are 4 ways in which Astrology can expand your awareness and create a shift in trusting life more deeply.
1. Astrology & Light
Astrology is the study of energy and spiritual reality. It can open us up to the many layers, facets, and aspects of our being and help us reveal truth through our lived experience and take greater responsibility for that which we desire and truly want to create.
Astrology is the study of light, consciousness, or energy as it flows through each of us and our world. Thus, Astrology can point to how we can remove internal energetic blocks. It shows us the nature of the energies that surround us and move through us at any given time and helps reveal what spiritual lessons are being presented in our experiences. Astrology is a bridge between personal reality (the relative) and realities beyond the personal (the transpersonal).
2. Astrology & Time
Astrology is the study of cosmos, chronos, & kairos. It can help us more clearly see the timing of a particular growth phase on our journey in life so we can rest into our own divine timing.
In Astrology, time can be viewed as three parts, each of which support us to resource more effectively:
1. COSMOS (timeless) = infinite pure awareness
2. CHRONOS (personification) = the passage of time through relative reality as we measure it chronologically
3. KAIROS(opportune moment) = potential/present moment where creative possibilities exist in transpersonal reality
3. Astrology & nature
Astrology is the study of seasons, rhythms, cycles, & karma regarding Spirit & Earth. It can support us see what cycles we are currently in, like a gardener may become aware of for making sure to plant a seed or make a harvest in ideal conditions.
Techniques in Vedic astrology use the sidereal zodiac and have applications in the larger karmic unfolding and spiritual identity–based on the motion of planets as measured against stars or constellations (spirit-based). These techniques point to the macro cycles and rhythms of our soul’s evolution through time and also speak to our true embodiment.
4. Astrology & Soul
Astrology is the study of soul embodiment. It allows us to see our unconscious more clearly to inform our incarnation process (which typically fully takes root at 51). It can awaken us to the subtle fabric of our existence and universal parallels to other people, even though the real truth being unveiled can only be gathered through our own lived experience.
Astrology helps us catalyze the process of spiritual awakening and “soul-embodiment” by synergizing the relationship between the relative (ego, physical world, & matter) and transpersonal (soul, nonphysical world, & energy).
Practices that catalyze soul embodiment include:
Contemplating astrology, breath work, yoga, qi gong, bodywork, energy work, exercise, dance, movement, chanting, or any other somatic practices that open us to the ever-present, infinite creative possibilities while bringing us more fully here into the present moment.
I hope you can see why this art-science is so cherished in my life. Reach out if you want to explore ways to navigate life with more joy, rest, ease, and inner resilience.
Photo/Artist Credit: AquaSixio
