Tran­script of Radio Show: Where are we now – The End of an Age – The Pandemic

The Pan­dem­ic
As you might imag­ine these last cou­ple of weeks almost every ses­sion I have done has always begun, though I have hour long ses­sions, the first 20 or 30 min­utes have been tak­en up with the events of the time, (and then I cer­tain­ly give that client their one hour ses­sion too). But most peo­ple want to talk about what is going on and what the stars have to say about it, and we share our expe­ri­ences and how we are try­ing to cope with this.

Whether it is clients in Europe who have had an ear­li­er taste of this, and here now in the US and around the world, we are try­ing to make sense of what is hap­pen­ing here. Of course for me in terms of what I have stud­ied, and rely­ing upon the ancient wis­dom, (being a stu­dent of his­to­ry and also stu­dent of astrol­o­gy for many years), I try to under­stand these things in big his­tor­i­cal terms and look­ing at the “arc of his­to­ry”, and I try to under­stand how that fits into the “arc of the plan­ets and their cycling”.

I always tend to frame it that way, and I am always opti­mistic because we have come through very trou­bling times before, again and again through­out his­to­ry, and Spir­it and the human spir­it finds a way through. It is always a time, I would say, of a quick­en­ing of spir­it, that when things have great “fric­tion” we reveal the “shin­ing” under­neath, and that behind all the incrus­ta­tions we see our love and com­pas­sion and car­ing for one another

Heroes of Humanity
That is show­ing up in leaps and bounds now, right here inti­mate­ly in our dai­ly lives as well as what we watch on the stage of the world with all those heroes out there. The front line, of course, con­sid­er­ing the con­di­tions were going through, our health care work­ers and oth­er lead­ers who are try­ing to fore­stall any greater calami­ty to us all. And we praise them like we did our 9/11 respon­ders here in New York, who rushed in with­out think­ing of them­selves. Their exam­ple is tru­ly the shin­ing star of human con­scious­ness; it is our self­less­ness and sac­ri­fice for one anoth­er, which is our love for one anoth­er. And it gives me goose­bumps when I watch what is going on, and what we will be going through, and hope­ful­ly we will have a lot of those shin­ing moments here to look back upon.

The End of an Age
But of course, you want to know why; why is this hap­pen­ing now? And again, Astro­log­i­cal­ly, as I have been say­ing, and prob­a­bly get­ting very dull now since before 2008, I have kept on this drum­beat that this is going to be a time that we will not for­get. Because this is a time much like it was in the 1700s and before that in the 1500s and so on that every 240, 250 years or so, one of those great plan­ets, the plan­et Plu­to the plan­et that rules Trans­for­ma­tion, Death and Rebirth, (I say it rules the will). But it is the pow­er of Cre­ation, of death and rebirth and renew­al. When it is mov­ing through cer­tain signs, it is affect­ing the qual­i­ties and con­di­tions that sign gov­erns. It always goes through a series of steps and stages, and we can look at them all at some point his­tor­i­cal­ly. But for our pur­pos­es, just to focus on today, I have said that in the 1500s was a time where a “world” came undone, in terms of how it was struc­tured eco­nom­i­cal­ly and polit­i­cal­ly and cul­tur­al­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly. It set in motion a new kind of cul­ture and econ­o­my and way of life for the next 250 years. And that came undone in the next episode of Plu­to through Capri­corn which was 1760 to 1770s.

The Answer or Solu­tion becomes the problem
In each of these peri­ods, what had been the dom­i­nant way of meet­ing human needs, because that is what we are talk­ing about, (we are humans, we take care of one anoth­er), whether with­in fam­i­lies or in com­mu­ni­ties, and then in larg­er social orga­ni­za­tions on up to state and transna­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions, it is all about meet­ing human needs. We cre­ate these sys­tems to meet our needs with­in fam­i­lies and then expand­ing out­ward, and the sys­tems we put in place, the pat­terns that we cre­ate will work for a time, per­haps for a very long time, but they are not for­ev­er. And they need to change because of their own inter­nal dynam­ic of no longer meet­ing the nature of what humans need at that time, but also exter­nal­ly, because of exter­nal events and changes in cli­mate and oth­er things, that make it no longer ten­able to meet our needs that way.

That is what hap­pened in the 1500s, it hap­pened again the 1700s. What hap­pens is the very solu­tion that is for­mu­lat­ed and put forth and becomes dom­i­nant in a peri­od, that solu­tion cre­ates its own con­tra­dic­tions and lim­i­ta­tions. We see these amaz­ing chal­lenges and prob­lems in the 1700s, that set in motion cer­tain dynam­ics in terms of releas­ing great wealth and pow­er, and accu­mu­la­tion and growth in soci­eties on the one hand, but also had inher­ent side effects that were going to be catch­ing up to us at some point. And, here they are, as the very things that we used to solve our prob­lems, (of hav­ing enough food and hav­ing enough pow­er and hav­ing and accu­mu­lat­ing more wealth and well-being in the world), is now chok­ing and destroy­ing the world, caus­ing all these dis­lo­ca­tions in the nat­ur­al world and our human made world.

That is the result of things we know, in terms of many sci­en­tists for years talk­ing about this, and that as we broke down the nat­ur­al sys­tems, and they came under greater stress, there would be reper­cus­sions. And as we moved into all spaces on the Earth, and came into con­tact with spaces that we nor­mal­ly would not, with pathogens and life­forms, and these became intro­duced into our world, and we would have no defens­es against them.

When did this begin?
You could say this goes back 10 to 15,000 years ago, when humans decid­ed (and it maybe longer than that, depend­ing upon how you look at his­to­ry), when humans became no longer hunter-gath­er­ers, and began to set­tle down into com­mu­ni­ties, as agri­cul­tur­al­ist and pas­toral­ists, and we began to live with our ani­mals. At that very moment, we began to have more of this inter­fac­ing with life-forms that we had no defens­es against, and we had to accu­mu­late those defenses.

But of course, that sped up over time, to the point where now it is rac­ing across the globe in a mat­ter of hours, because of how we have con­nect­ed to one anoth­er through these amaz­ing tech­nolo­gies. But the down­side is yes, there is this greater con­nec­tiv­i­ty for all things trav­el­ing along those path­ways includ­ing things that are dan­ger­ous to us.

And so many peo­ple are say­ing, well why did we let this hap­pen? There were many voic­es speak­ing to this, say­ing it is going to hap­pen again, and to the extent that we have rig­or­ous pub­lic health struc­tures, and peo­ple look­ing out for these things, we could catch it in time.

Of course, in many places and cul­tures they have some of those sys­tems in place, and they may be far­ing a lit­tle bet­ter than oth­er places. And, in oth­er sys­tems, they took their “eye off the ball”, and they did not put the funds and resources there, they did not catch it ear­ly enough, and now they are try­ing to play “catch up”. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Amer­i­ca and oth­er coun­tries are in that role, of hav­ing not been as resilient in terms of some resources that we would like to draw upon at this time.

Why does this happen?
So, peo­ple ask, why does this hap­pen? The plan­ets do not cause this. They are what they are, in their reg­u­lar pat­tern­ing with each oth­er, and they set in motion peri­ods where there is a begin­ning of some­thing; and then it comes to a piv­ot point; then it comes to a cli­max; and around again until it begins a new cycle. What hap­pens with­in that cycle, any cycle, whether it is look­ing at things in the month­ly cycle of the Sun and Moon or oth­er kinds of week­ly cycles every 7 days, every 14 days, some­thing begins and goes through var­i­ous stages. Just like in dis­ease, a doc­tor will note the onset of a dis­ease and then you reach a crit­i­cal moment at 3 1/2 days, and then anoth­er inflec­tion at 7 days. There are these con­stants in terms of num­bers and Fibonac­ci sequences, that seem to time the unfold­ment of nat­ur­al and beyond nat­ur­al process­es, that seem to shape the tim­ing of things.

But what hap­pens in any one of those times, depend­ing upon what organ­ism we are talk­ing about, is depen­dent upon that organ­ism, espe­cial­ly when we are talk­ing about humans, since we have much greater pow­ers to change our world and ourselves.

We are the Cause
What is hap­pen­ing here, the con­tent of what we are fac­ing, that is on us. It is not caused by Plu­to in Capri­corn; it is not caused by Sat­urn going from Capri­corn to Aquar­ius, which it did last night. And we are thank­ful for that, because it brings a new kind of test here into the world for us all, one that is quite strik­ing in terms of what we are going through, and I will def­i­nite­ly men­tion that.

But in terms of what we are fac­ing, there is no deter­mi­na­tion com­ing from the plan­ets. They just say when and what the nature of it might be. That this is a time when the insti­tu­tions fall apart. And what will be revealed to us is how lack­ing they are in their capac­i­ty to han­dle cer­tain prob­lems, that in some sense they helped to cre­ate these prob­lems, that the way we did things help to cre­ate these problems.

And we will see indi­vid­u­als, some ris­ing to the occa­sion and being the heroes of the moment, peo­ple who are author­i­ties in var­i­ous posi­tions, that are car­ry­ing out their duties as best they can, giv­en the times they are in. And oth­ers we will see, like the insti­tu­tions them­selves, are fail­ing and flail­ing, because they do not have the char­ac­ter, they do not have the integri­ty, they do not have the virtue, they do not have the wis­dom, and they do not act with truth. That is revealed at a time like this, every­thing is exposed.

Most of us, as we have been told, will get through this fine. There will be incon­ve­niences, cer­tain­ly, and dev­as­tat­ing eco­nom­ic con­se­quences, but life will go on. There are those we should be rush­ing to help who are more vul­ner­a­ble, and those who are in the front lines who need our sup­port because they are putting their life on the line every sin­gle moment.

It need not have been this dif­fi­cult; there is no neces­si­ty to how dif­fi­cult it is now. That is through a series of choic­es or will­ful igno­rance or what have you, by those who might have tak­en steps. We nev­er lay this on the plan­ets and say they are the cause of some­thing. They are a way of look­ing for the mean­ing­ful­ness of some­thing. And yes, in indi­vid­ual charts we can say this is a time for hav­ing stress in your life, and then you need to be able to cope with that.

Cer­tain­ly, Plu­to going through Capri­corn is a stress­ful peri­od in his­to­ry for all places. But obvi­ous­ly, dif­fer­ent places and peo­ples and cul­tures will respond dif­fer­ent­ly giv­en their lev­el of devel­op­ment and integri­ty in han­dling those crises. And that is what we are see­ing play out across the plan­et right now in this quite lit­er­al­ly glob­al pandemic.

Sat­urn — Test of Respon­si­bil­i­ty, becomes the Test of Community
So what we can do right now is under­stand that the test we’ve been under­go­ing for the last 2 1/2 years, with Sat­urn also being in Capri­corn was a test of respon­si­bil­i­ty, where we would see how well our sys­tems were hold­ing and peo­ple with­in those sys­tems under­stood the exer­cise of their pow­er and car­ried it out cor­rect­ly or did not; or failed to do so, dropped the ball, stum­bled and caused greater harm. But just last night and now this morn­ing, and for the next cou­ple of years, the plan­et Sat­urn is in Aquar­ius. The next test for all of us, with­in this larg­er test of Plu­to going through Capri­corn, (which con­tin­ues till 2024), is that Sat­urn in Aquar­ius says we have got to think about and face our under­stand­ing of our Social Con­scious­ness and Conscience.

It is real­ly about com­mu­ni­ty, and that we real­ize that our true nature is not indi­vid­ual but that we are made of one anoth­er. And we need one anoth­er to devel­op intel­li­gence, to devel­op our know­ing, devel­op our feel­ings and have these con­nec­tions with­in our­selves that are formed by all these con­nec­tions we form out and around our­selves. I like to say, “we are more of a we than an I” and most of our thoughts and feel­ings and under­stand­ing has been formed by all these inter­ac­tions we have had with peo­ple through­out our lives, and through many lives.

What is “the Good”, what is Happiness?
We must work at main­tain­ing and pre­serv­ing and extend­ing our com­mu­ni­ties, because it is all about this: How do we achieve the great­est lev­el of self-ful­fill­ment, for one and for all? What is hap­pi­ness? Hap­pi­ness is reach­ing one’s high­est lev­el of self-real­iza­tion, which has to be some­thing we all strive for, to bring every­body up to that greater lev­el of self-real­iza­tion, because then we will suc­ceed as a cul­ture and a peo­ple and a planet.

If we fail to cre­ate con­di­tions that allow for this greater self-real­iza­tion and there­fore of hap­pi­ness, we will go into a dark­er peri­od. So, right now, as we are being asked to phys­i­cal­ly sep­a­rate, we have to ever more pull togeth­er, call one anoth­er, speak to one anoth­er, wave to one anoth­er from a respect­ful dis­tance and hold togeth­er and help one anoth­er through this time.

Our social con­nec­tions are being test­ed, and I am sure that they will be found to be strong and true. This will revive a human spir­it in terms of fel­low­ship and com­mu­ni­ty and love of my neigh­bor. And love of all oth­ers in com­mu­ni­ties around the world, com­mu­ni­ty to com­mu­ni­ty band­ing togeth­er to solve our problems.

The Old Order, The New World
It is in the dark time, by Plu­to going to Capri­corn when the world falls apart, that a New World is also equal­ly emerg­ing, and that will become ever more evi­dent as we move into 2024 and 25 and 26. It is not going to be easy to build a New World, because we know there are sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems that we are con­fronting, not the least of which is the chal­lenge of dis­eases spring­ing out of nowhere like this, seem­ing­ly, but it is not from nowhere. Or watch­ing the eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion of this plan­et and the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of life itself in peril.

We are, as we like to think, a high­er life­form, hav­ing self-aware­ness and self-con­scious­ness. But we have been act­ing very stu­pid­ly for a long time in terms of think­ing we could get away with destroy­ing low­er life-forms and our own life-form be unaf­fect­ed by that.

Life depends on Life
All life depends on life; and the high­er life­forms even more so depend on all low­er life­forms, from the most micro­scop­ic to larg­er macro­scop­ic realms. We are right now remov­ing life from this plan­et, at an increas­ing rate. If we do not turn that around, (not that these oth­er eco­log­i­cal sys­tems and oth­er beings have inher­ent val­ue them­selves, vast val­ue) our poten­tial and our val­ue, and our real­iza­tion will very much dimin­ish as a result.

So, the hour is late, and I see these blows we are receiv­ing in eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ters and fires and storms and now waves of pan­demics, as signs of the plan­et is say­ing: “Stop! Change your way, wake up to the need for con­sid­er­ing all life is sacred”, pro­tect­ing all of life, and pro­tect­ing your own life through that.

First, we need to reach out to one anoth­er and then to all oth­er life forms, to con­tin­ue upon this won­der­ful “lifeboat of life” that we call our Earth. But right now the hour is late, and right now we are fac­ing this cri­sis that we have to get through, and we are being asked to make extra­or­di­nary changes and sac­ri­fices, which we will make for one anoth­er and for the future. But cer­tain­ly, it is not a neces­si­ty at all that this had to hap­pen. Some­thing would have to break­down, and things are break­ing down and cer­tain­ly around the world in var­i­ous ways, but that is also because it was time. But it is equal­ly time to start build­ing bet­ter sys­tems, a bet­ter way of meet­ing our needs and meet­ing the needs for one anoth­er that are sus­tain­able and can be passed down to future gen­er­a­tions as they improve upon that in many, many years and decades and even cen­turies to come.

But this is our moment, this is our moment when we see the end of an age. And rather than strik­ing fear into our hearts we should real­ize: We are grate­ful for where it brought us, this civ­i­liza­tion and cul­ture; but we see its inher­ent con­tra­dic­tions and lim­i­ta­tions and how it is itself a very imped­i­ment to future human evo­lu­tion and fulfillment.

Spir­i­tu­al Awakening/Spiritual Praxis
There­fore, we must change, we must be these instru­ments of change, now. There is no time to delay. And maybe this is one of those shocks or wake up calls that makes us see that. That the epi­dem­ic, this pan­dem­ic COVID-19, is a bless­ing, because it makes peo­ple real­ize they can­not just get by, they can­not pre­tend that every­thing is okay, that this is mere­ly a pass­ing challenge.

There is a spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing that will take place in many souls and in many hearts, and we are all expe­ri­enc­ing it on dif­fer­ent lev­els I am sure. I am cer­tain­ly hear­ing that from many peo­ple. We all wish it did not have to hap­pen this way, and I do not think it had to hap­pen this way, but it is where we are and it is where we are going to be for some time, to get our­selves out of this self-cre­at­ed mess that we are in.

The Way is Truth
We will do bet­ter, we will be fine, but we need to remem­ber how to find our way. And that is why I always return to ancient teach­ings, to ancient phi­los­o­phy, to meta­phys­i­cal prin­ci­ples to hold us true to the fun­da­men­tal teach­ings, which are:

Life is sacred and what­ev­er and whomev­er I encounter is an aspect of the divine, and to treat it as any­thing less than that is to harm myself.

Love is the is the ener­gy that holds this whole uni­verse together.

In think­ing you will find that truth is Wisdom.

In feel­ing you will find that truth is Beauty.

In liv­ing you will find that truth is Virtue.

And in action you will find that truth is Moderation.

Self-Mas­tery
Many dif­fer­ent philoso­phies under­stand this and have spo­ken to this. The sto­ic philoso­phers are amaz­ing, and they affirm that we can only con­trol our­selves. And so, self-mas­tery is the key, which comes from self-knowl­edge and knowl­edge of the world around oneself.

So, we need to do our own part in mas­ter­ing our­selves and con­duct­ing our­selves with integri­ty, and in search­ing for truth. By find­ing truth we will estab­lish greater equi­lib­ri­um and nor­mal­cy in our­selves and in our con­duct. No one pos­sess­es truth, but you can become pos­sessed by it, and know what is right and what is wrong, with­out think­ing about it; it requires no thought what­so­ev­er, it is an intu­itive feel­ing and this is what should guide us.

When will this end?
Prob­a­bly peo­ple want me to say when is this going to end, and there are experts in epi­demi­ol­o­gy and pan­demics that know far bet­ter than me, (and we are all read­ing about these things now), what the time­line is here. But I would stress, and as they stress, the time­line is not fixed; it is deter­mined by how we each act and fol­low what we find are the rea­son­able and right author­i­ties who have more under­stand­ing, the sci­en­tists and those polit­i­cal and oth­er lead­ers who are stay­ing on the straight and nar­row path, and fol­low their advice and do what we are asked to do and answer the call if we have to, and that will that will deter­mine how long this takes.

But there is no astro­log­i­cal deter­mi­na­tion that says this or that will hap­pen. Because obvi­ous­ly what is hap­pen­ing here on the plan­et for every­one is a response and result by each indi­vid­ual and com­mu­ni­ty and nation in its own fashion.

So, each of us must do our utmost and best, if we want to get through this more eas­i­ly and no longer be under this fear­ful ener­gy-form that seems to be hold­ing peo­ple in place right now. Instead, we should remove the fear by act­ing in lov­ing man­ners, in lov­ing ways and lov­ing actions towards one anoth­er, that is the great­est thing any of us can do right now, at any point in time, but espe­cial­ly a time when it seems as if we want to retreat and with­draw from one anoth­er. We need to stay dis­tant, but we need to be even more con­nect­ed is the message.