Systems of Nature. Venus into Taurus 3/16/23

Mother nature is a natural system who makes  more natural systems. You are such a natural system; individual and unique yet a part of the enormous system of nature. The more you can sense your uniqueness the more strength you can draw from the whole of nature. 

She is pregnant, so to speak, with all of us. We are still inside of nature’s unity. The only chance to be born is to become increasingly aware of our dualistic nature. We are part separate and free and part connected and bound.

She would never dream of taking away our power to make choices, that is why we are free. But she would never turn her back on us either, that is why when we make choices that are true to our unique natures, she sends up surges of new strength and energy. We are free to create yet bound to respond. 

Natural systems have parts or aspects that use a set of laws to make up a coherent whole. 

In our freedom to create, we can create our own laws. But these laws must be real to us so that we can respond truthfully by our bound-nature.

Mother nature doesn’t turn her back. She produces bounty and she supports you, whether you are aware of it or not, in your own productive living.

Taurus is the second sign and it represents the ultimate duality in a world that also has unity. The unity is made of love, and love never forces or coerces. The only way for love to grow in a world of individuals is in granting the freedom of choice. When choice aligns with love then the unity reveals itself. When choices have no footing in one’s nature and no regard for the nature of others, not only does unity not present itself, but fragmented reality keeps splintering like a house of mirrors in the end of Orson Welles’ Lady from Shanghai. 

Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles in The Lady From Shanghai, 1948

Unity, love and a homecoming is always right around the corner, like the bounty of springtime. All that is needed is to feel your freedom of choice within a world that waits for you to choose well, a world that cares about your choices and communicates directly back to you.

Abandoning this freedom, or giving it up to someone else cuts you off from the richest dialogue; that of you and nature, or your nature within all of nature.

The torus (aka Taurus) is a self organizing system that creates more systems. The cells, organs and nerves that comprise your body are little systems within a bigger one. You are a little system within a bigger one. Just as your liver or brain is not truly separate from you, you are not truly separate from all of nature, i.e. the universe.

Your brain and liver serve a purpose in your body. You also serve a purpose within this greater tapestry of the universe. What purpose? Only you can know. Only you can listen to the feedback of mother nature in response to every free choice you make. Only you can know if you are allowing her to raise you right. 

Connection is where we are bound as seen in the lock of a good hug. Connection is where the earth currents run through our bodies and bathe our nervous systems in the same substance of a sunset or a field of lilies. 

Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss, 1907-1908

The solid ground is that of your own fortitude. In your choices, in your knowledge of what binds you, in your new discoveries of what calls or speaks to you, in the new laws that you create for your system, you stand on solid ground. You stand in nature as a smaller nature with access to all of the bigness through the power of choice. This is how the universe lovingly supports us and helps us grow.

Living systems grow and sustain themselves by extracting energy from their environment; like food, sunlight and water. But there are other sources of energy for the human species: art, books, ideas, other people, rituals and so on. The environment is large and full of possibilities. The potential for new energy is endless. In the quality of the connection to these energy sources, lies the potency of the energy. 

Someone who doesn’t really like art museums will not be as ‘charged’ after a day at the Met than someone who does (unless of course the person surprises themselves by realizing “I really did enjoy myself). The enjoyment, the satisfaction of connecting with the source of potential energy is personal. There are so many things that can get in the way of this sacred energy transfer, a bad mood, for example.

Archetypes are symbols that carry charges of meaning. The zodiac consists of twelve supercharged archetypes. They won’t barricade down your door seeking connection, they are part of nature, and in being part of nature they answer to the loving principles of nature that exists in a world of free choice.  As Venus moves into Taurus on Thursday, 3/16/23, you may stumble upon the archetype in your enjoyment (Venus) of an aromatic cup of tea (Taurus). Depending on the richness of your connection, you will receive new energy. This new energy that streams in from your environment works to organize your system, as new energy does with all living systems. 

In a fast paced digital society, the options for energy sources are increasing but the seriousness and personalness of connecting tangibly to something so that the real earth currents move through us is lessening. 

Allow this deluxe transit of Venus through Taurus to bring you back to your system, within the big system; back to your access to bigness through the richness and realness of true connection.

Venus will be travelling through Taurus until April 10, 2023 when she sets off in Gemini.

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Sharpening the Imaginal. Saturn into Pisces.

Mark Twain said “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus”.

Saturn, the planet of focus, moves into the imaginal realm of Pisces today on March 7th, 2023. Are you ready to get your vision checked?

The transit occurs at the height of a Full Moon, ensuring that no magic goes wasted on such a potent shift. Saturn had been focused for the past 3 years in Aquarius, the sign of networking, future, and individualism, seeing the growth of the web and the rise of new existential questions about how we are to live in a blooming digital age. Now the focus shifts into the imagination.

How sharp can you see with the eyes of your heart? How much reality can you discern in the clear sweeps of a fairy tale that has diligently been taking shape all of your life yet remains cocooned in the galaxy of your dreams?

Concentration is such a powerful gift, as are all of nature’s powers. Concentration is like tossing a stone into the waters of your mind and allowing the concentric circles to radiate outward. No matter how big these circles get, how far they travel into a larger sense of self and a bigger sense of nature, they share the same center. Your concentration is that center, surrounded by coherence in a large and poetic natural world. 

There is sight to be brightened by the sea of dreams. Saturn will swim through these waters until May 2025, and again with the retrograde from August 2025 to February 2026.

I Love Springtime in a Paradigm Shift

Though every moment in time is new, and every breaking day is as well, there are some times when new is even newer. Springtime is an example of extra newness. So is the beginning of a new age.

On March 23, 2023, just days past the spring equinox, powerful Pluto moves into Aquarius where it will stay until it retrogrades back into Capricorn for the summer, and then back for good by the fall.  Pluto will continue traveling in Aquarius until the year 2043!

History itself can become new through the eyes of foresight. The last time Pluto traveled through Aquarius was at the end of the ‘long 18th century’ better known as the Enlightenment. Scientific discovery was yielding so much exciting truth, it filled the atmosphere with questions. Both the French and American Revolutions occurred at this time. There was an unprecedented atmosphere of ‘thinking for oneself’. For their salvation no longer was in the church, but somewhere else.

This period gave way to the Romantic era of the 19th century, which pushed back against the Scientific reductionist view. Poets such as Wordsworth and Blake insisted on the ‘aliveness’ of nature; a potency beyond the measurable world. The only way of knowing this potency was through one’s private viewpoint; thus the spirit of individualism carried its way deep into the heart of the artist, which is everyone’s birthright.

Over 200 years later, we find ourselves in a new atmosphere that demands a new kind of “thinking for ourselves”. It used to be that physical space and imaginal dream space were the only spaces in which we could move about. Now, digital space is such a part of life that it has one questioning the nature of reality in a new way. We know we want connection, but we also know that connection is not a game of numbers. What is it that we seek? New ideas and old ideas are more accessible than ever. Less accessible are the instincts of nature that we are not only born with but born for. We were meant to perfect these natural powers of creativity and productivity and carry them to new heights and depths.

We navigate the digital space everyday amidst a sea of screaming salesmen wielding a thumbs up. The paradoxical freedom and alienation of a digital age is similar to the freedom and alienation of the Enlightenment. People were free of the church’s authority, yet alienated from a familiar and secure worldview. 

But the alienation is productive. It drives one towards a stricter grasp of what is meaningful and towards what is real. Some very interesting modern physicists argue that time is the realist thing in the universe.

Time’s arrow moves forward. Within every emerging moment is the spirited reality of newness. 

The question becomes not ‘what is life’ but rather: how do you want to live in a world that is, in essence, a continual Springtime?

Jung’s Vital Relationship Between Ego and Self

Carl Gustav Jung said there were two centers to the human psyche; the ego and the Self. The ego is the center of consciousness and the Self is the center of the whole psyche; consciousness and unconsciousness.

These two centers are separate, autonomous identities that organize and attempt to bring coherence to the lives we lead. But the problem is, the relationship between the two of these centers is often out of whack.

In childhood, the ego and the Self are one, and the child experiences him/herself to be a deity. As the child grows and begins to act and think for themselves, an ego is formed; a new center of gravity, an idea of who they are.

In his book, Ego and Archetype, Jungian scholar Edward Edinger describes psychic growth as a process flowing from ego-Self separation to ego-Self reunion and back again in a spiral pattern.

A child stealing a cookie from the cookie jar is similar to Prometheus stealing the fire from the gods. It is a kind of daring that initiates ego development. It is a willful act against a reigning authority.

It is on the subject of authority that things get really interesting. For as it turns out, the Self is the reigning authority; “an autonomous inner directiveness” at work. There is an organizing force within you to which the ego serves. More often than not the ego goes against this authority too, wreaking havoc on one’s sense of wholeness and authenticity.

How can one come to recognize the Self and allow the ego to work for it and not against it? 

Edinger explains that the ego has to learn to relate to the Self without being identified with it. In other words, the ego must get cozy with the Self’s authoritative role. 

The trick is to train yourself to recognize yourSelf in the numinous ‘other’. This way your ego relates to the Self without being identified by it. 

When the ego relates to the Self without being identified by it, the ego-Self axis maintains its integrity.

Picasso likely saw himSelf in cubism and his ego served this higher calling. Jane Goodall likely saw herSElf in the social habits of chimpanzees. Martin Luther King saw himSelf in the suffering of his fellow man. 

When the ego recognizes the separateness and the authority of the Self a primary feeling takes over. Landscapes of creative possibilities open up. There is plenty of fire in the engine because the engine is authentic and the fire is real spiritedness.

The funny truth of the matter is that yourSelf is bigger than you! But in relating to this bigness with humility and a productive spirit, you become more you. Your nature smiles, along with the larger nature that surrounds and connects to it.

Enough of an Artist

Einstein said “I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.”

Pisces Season begins next Saturday, February 18th.. Einstein was an ultimate Pisces, giving primacy to wonder and awe over knowledge and understanding. Like the fish, he could in a sense breathe underwater, that is to say he could rely on his creative imagination to nourish and sustain himself and his pursuits.

The imagination does something very strange. It makes whatever you imagine an ‘other’ to which you can relate. Just as the words you read right now are something ‘other’ to which you relate and try to make sense of, the images in your imagination are an ‘other’. Just as the person who rang up your coffee this morning is an ‘other’, so is the heroine you aspire and imagine yourself to become.

With every varying ‘other’ there is a potential for renewed wholeness. A certain phrase or melody, a person’s charm, a place, even a flavor can evoke a ‘thou’ experience; where whatever you are relating to makes everything bigger and more real. This is because you are enough of an artist to let your skills of relating generate a certain amount of awe and undeniable resonance. 

It’s easy to picture a “thou” experience while standing before the Grand Canyon. Less intuitive is seeing the potential of generating such reverence for your own archetypes that swim about in potentia. With an active imagination, pertinent narratives and myths take shape and offer guidance. Not only do they offer guidance, they offer energy through their archetypal charges. One gets a taste for something; a way of living, a way of getting something accomplished, or in Einstein’s case, a way of solving seemingly impossible abstract problems.

Imagination is free, as are you to use it well. That is, if you are enough of an artist.

Love As Metaphysical Gravity

Why do we fall in love? Why don’t we climb in love or sprint? Is love something below us that we fall into? And then why can it make us feel like we walk on clouds? 

When planets fall they fall towards the sun; a central and most luminous source. In their orbits they are perpetually falling. We are perpetually falling too. We are pushed up by the floors that we stand on and the chairs that we sit upon.

Gravity is the mysterious force of attraction by which terrestrial bodies tend to fall towards the center of the earth. In the center of the Earth fire burns like a second Sun. 

R. Buckmister Fuller called love “metaphysical gravity”.

The center of the earth in a psychological sense points to the center of your earth; an elusive Self that is born of nature and is nature. Is this where we fall towards when we fall in love? Are we put into an orbit that pivots around something bright and brilliant and born from within? 

Light makes vision possible. Light born from love extends vision farther; both outwardly and inwardly. Out to the day and into the night, behind one’s eyes and back into the next day. Love can extend and deepen another’s worldview.

Valentine’s Day always falls in the far-out season of Aquarius.

Serious Saturn will join the Sun. Seriousness is like gravity, a force that anchors. Towards what does this force make you fall?

The star-player, Venus will be in her best gown; floating in Pisces near the divine planet of Neptune. Whatever your plans, add some ruffles and a string section.

The Bal Mabille by Jean Béraud

First Week of February Metaphorcast, 2023

Groundhog’s day is on its way this week, featuring the appearance of Punxsutawney Phil, one of the most unusual celebrities. Aside from being a groundhog, his fame rests upon a one simple yearly question: will he see his shadow or not? To this answer is ascribed an outlook for the rest of us as to whether or not we can soon ditch our coats and open some windows. Although Phil receives much publicity on his special day, his fame is centered on a most private thing: what he sees in a moment.

Time is ultimately a flow of moments. Continuous and forward reaching. In each moment there are things to be seen, thought about, anticipated and reflected upon.

A couple years back I was in love with the show, This Is Us. The plot was driven by one dramatic theme, a father’s love. The show was made powerful by dramatizing the flow of time, in other words, rendering the flow of time more real. Continuous flashbacks support the character’s present moment sense of direction. The drive they find inside is born of something real and authentic. The audience has special seats into their lifetimes of subjective responses slowly magnetizing them towards a sense of destiny.

I say it rendered the flow of time more real because in reality, the flow of time is dramatic. The past is charged, the future is free! And the only thing that is real is now. (What!?)

Time is more bizarre than anything, even famous groundhogs. Yet it is also fundamental. You are never not in a moment in time. The moment and you are perpetually flowing, like the wavy lines of Aquarius’ glyph. I see time’s drama to be a hint that time is rooted in something immeasurable. No one can quantify the dramatic performance of Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. Because drama is not a measured thing. Although it is measured in many ways, time is ultimately something dramatic and immeasurable. Its essence must be in spiritedness and creativity.

A full Moon in dramatic Leo lights our stage on Sunday, providing a glowing limelight for anyone who sees it.

Will you see it?

Will Winter be gone soon?

Do you remember what you did last groundhog’s day?

Where are you heading now?

Aquarian Age Dawning Still with a New Moon

Even though the 5th dimension said it best over 50 years ago, this is still the dawning of the age of Aquarius. 

With a New Moon today in Aquarius just as Aquarius season kicks off, and a powerful join up of Venus and Saturn in this sign as well, it is a good time to consider ‘the mind’s true liberation’. 

50 years ago, the Aquarian Age was celebrated as a hopeful future of ‘harmony and understanding’. The year the song was released was 1969, a most momentous year of change. 

Every time I hear that song on the radio I prepare myself. If it’s raining I even remove myself a bit from the song by not turning it up too loud. For I can’t help but sing along with tears streaming. Maybe it’s the images of Treat Williams marching off to war, bewildered, while the peace protesters storm Washington (as depicted in the end scene of the movie ‘Hair’). Maybe it’s that simple suggestion; “let the sunshine in”. Above all it is the momentum of the song, and a reminder of the momentum of 1969. 

I didn’t even live through this time. Yet, like anyone else who loves Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix, I am deeply connected to this time. There was awful stuff happening like Vietnam and the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, but there was a momentous unity emerging that was undeniable. And the music reflects this as perfectly as water reflects moonlight. 

Now in 2023, the idea of the future is dissipating into anyone’s best guess. We will need to go deeper into the archetype of Aquarius in order to get a grasp on this new age, and perhaps even attain a “mystic crystal revelation”. 

Aquarius is not only the sign of future, innovation and change, it is also the sign of the individual. Not everyone loves the song that drives me to tears in traffic. The reason for this is that each individual has their own subjectivity. 

The philosopher F.W.J Schelling saw human subjectivity to be the highest potency of nature. 

The momentum of the changing times are easily recognized in a song. But what about the momentum of an individual’s changes? The changes that generate measurable changes in one’s chemistry? Is there a sense of future here? 

Aquarius is the waterbearer, the subjectivity-owner, the one with a capacity to be moved, changed and affected. As the song chants towards the end “you’ve got to feel it”. 

Heraclitus said “it is the tension between each opposite end of a harp string that allows us to hear the music”. 

Time is also a kind of tension between ‘the times that are a changin’ and the changes that occur within you. Instead of Woodstock we have the world wide web. It is a bit harder to hear the music that unites us, but the uniting capacity of ideas and people across the globe has never been more robust. 

New moons are more quiet than full moons. The introspective tone that they emit is similar to the harp player tuning her strings. She needs quiet, she needs focus, she needs to establish her correct tension. 

Aquarius wavy lines are like the vibrations on a string. Will the tension be right to produce music? Can you find the right tension between the changes within you and the changes of the times ? The Age of Aquarius might still become an age of ‘harmony and understanding’, but not if we don’t establish this first as individuals.

Today’s new moon might as well be a new moon for the ages. This is to say, a new respect for ‘the highest potency of nature’; human subjectivity. We bear this potency, and with it comes responsibility. The evolution of nature is the evolution of human nature. The ‘mind’s true liberation’ is the liberation of nature and its freedom to create and build.

But first, you’ve got to feel it.

After One Year, My Book is Here!

It all started with a simple question: could the zodiac be arranged vertically, ascending from the depths to the heights of existence?

Do the natural elements hint at an upward ‘path’ with the depths of water ascending to the solidity of earth, then to the atmosphere of air and finally, the heights of fire?  

​A little doodle in a notebook arranged the signs as if they took the shape of a plant.  Its roots draw from the depths of water.  Its seeds sprout in the earth that is nourished by the air above. It stretches upward to the light of the sun.

No sooner did I draw the zodiac to look like a plant then the true shape of the zodiac emerged: the torus field.

A torus field is a self-sustaining shape with two vortexes on each end that run through a central axis.  It is the shape of  a whirlpool and a tornado.  It is the invisible shape of every living creature in the universe and quite possibly the universe itself!

​The zodiac is a blueprint for nature.

On the wheel it turns with the changes of the seasons and the passing of the hour.  This time is cyclic.  It folds on itself and makes meaning.  This kind of time is based on law.  It has to be.  Otherwise Summer would no longer follow Spring and it would be impossible to be anywhere “on time”.

​But the torus field reveals another kind of time, one that is more biological and experiential.  It doesn’t turn on the clock.  It burns from within.  It illuminates choices and paths to take.  This time is not based on law.  It is based on freedom and it is who you truly are.

​A basic understanding of astrology may be helpful in reading this book but it is by no means necessary.  I use the zodiac as a guide to a true philosophy of nature and what it means to be human.

You can buy the book here!

Time to celebrate!

Be The Cause. Inspiration From Spinoza.

The philosopher Baruch Spinoza saw nature to be synonymous with God.  He saw all living creatures as a part of this whole.  The thing that tied everything together was affectivity; the capacity to affect and be affected. 

He saw everything to be relative to something else in a web-like structure.  Consciousness sits in the middle of cause and effect, attempting to better perceive this ‘web’. 

If the web of cause and effect can be somewhat perceived, something very special can happen. We can become the cause and will the effect.

If we notice that the sun makes plants grow, we can plant seeds in the right spot. If bears notice that salmon swim upstream at a certain time of year they can position themselves to capitalize on this event and fill up their bellies.

 But animals don’t focus themselves into an idea of a future that suits them on a highly individual level. They go with nature’s flow. They are nature, as we are, but with them there is no confusion. There is also no freedom to create a unique future to answer an inner calling.

 Camus said, ‘with rebellion, awareness is born.” Human awareness is free of time’s constraints. Reflective thought allows us to get outside of time’s bondage and then return to it with better ideas of navigation. The only way to navigate time is to embrace its forward push. There is no backwards time navigation and no time machines. To navigate time well is to embrace the forward push within your own chemistry.

 The web of cause and effect becomes very personal. It is now quite evident to strive to clearly see what causes your effects. Maybe the problem that you continue to face is less about circumstance and more about a mindset, and maybe not. Seeing it clearly reveals true strategies to get back to ‘forward’.

 And what about the effects that are not negative? Are you paying attention to those? This would include effects such as delight, peacefulness, enjoyment. Maybe you think that a certain tv show gives you delight but in examining the true cause it becomes clear that the delight lies in getting a taste of a certain kind of life. Maybe it’s a life of more adventure and maybe it’s a life of better simplicity. To go on enjoying the show without ever examining its true cause of delight might keep you from taking a certain action towards something wonderful for your flourishing.

 The point is that the cause and effect pattern of the wide world we live in is like an elaborate web. Scientists see much further into the web than the bear awaiting salmon. They have found ways to determine the solid causes and effects of invisible forces. They can calculate measurements that serve as learning tools for future human minds to discover even more, as they build on this knowledge. The web emerges, in plain sight for those that learn these things.

 But the web is not just for scientists, it is also for artists, psychologists, engineers, teachers, farmers, chefs, parents and athletes. Anyone can use the knowledge of this ever-growing web to their advantage. Anyone can become the cause that they want to become, in search of desired effects.

 The web is vast and worldly, but also quite intimate and immediately present should one decide to become aware of it. If we can learn what the toroscope teaches us about the ego then we can witness a very personal web that is in the constant act of being spun. The Moon, our egos, are in a continuous state of change. Constantly “arising with a tinge of the past on the fringe of the future” as the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead described. He said we inherit the past, thus we are bound to it, but we are free to create. Each moment truly is the potential to a new dawn. You can wake up to the web you are spinning, or you can stay asleep to your momentum and spin in a mechanical spidery way.

 In the zodiac, Saturn represents ’cause’. These causes make up all of science and describe the laws of our natural world.

Saturn upside down is Jupiter. The toroscopes alerts us to the reality of inward and outward connections. If Saturn is the flipside of Jupiter, they are in a sense the same thing. If Saturn is the cause then Jupiter is also a kind of cause, just consisting of fire stuff instead of earth, or willing instead of law.

What kind of cause is this? It’s a cause that stands outside of time, in fire’s eternity.

The cause is quite simply your potential to be the cause, and create an effect. Embracing this ‘reality’ within is called confidence. It is as natural to embrace this cause as it is to embrace the cause of rain falling from the sky, in fact it is more natural.