Tran­script of Radio Show: 2020 Half-Year Review – Where are we now?

I thought it would be use­ful as we reach the mid­dle of 2020, to look back at what we have expe­ri­enced and learned about our world and our­selves. I am sure all of you will agree that this year will stand out in the time­line of his­to­ry. We have wit­nessed a series of events and crises that shat­tered many old cer­tain­ties into what they were, half-truths and illusions.

Being a stu­dent of his­to­ry and human­i­ty, and guid­ed by the Ancient Wis­dom and Astrol­o­gy, I choose to look at our present sit­u­a­tion as a chap­ter in a very long sto­ry, a brief moment in the cir­cuitous path humans have fol­lowed for many years. We humans have always strug­gled to lift our aware­ness, and our way of liv­ing, from dark­ness into the light, from fear and self­ish­ness to love and selflessness.

For me and for those who fol­low the many teach­ings that are root­ed in the Ancient Wis­dom, this present time was expect­ed to be a crit­i­cal junc­ture, a turn­ing for human­i­ty and the plan­et. But it was not “des­tined” to be this way; the exact con­tent of our chal­lenge was not pre-deter­mined. No, we humans are the creators/destroyers on the plan­et now, and we humans made choic­es long ago, and run­ning up to this very day, and it is those choic­es and those actions that have made “what” we are faced with. As I have said before, the stars and plan­ets did not bring about the Pan­dem­ic; if you want to know what the cause of that is, we only need to look in the mir­ror. And of course, that is even more true with regards to our inhu­man­i­ty to our fel­low humans.

But make no mis­take, the tim­ing of the cri­sis, and the deep­er themes that are being addressed here, the plan­ets can very much help us under­stand why now, and what it is for.

I feel like a very bro­ken record some­times, but what is true remains true. Though we often get cap­ti­vat­ed and even enthralled by the phe­nom­e­na of the events in this world, if you real­ly want to know what is going on, you need to move beyond the play of shad­ows and lights, you must seek for the noume­na that encom­pass­es and explains our more lim­it­ed real­i­ty. So, as before I will begin with Pluto.

The End of an Age
Pluto’s jour­ney around our Sun takes about 245 years. As Plu­to trav­els through each sign, it sig­nals a trans­for­ma­tion­al restruc­tur­ing of the ener­gy-forms for that Sign. From 2008 to 2024, Plu­to is mov­ing through the Sign of Capri­corn, which in Mun­dane or World­ly Astrol­o­gy rules the Insti­tu­tion­al order for any enti­ty. What does this mean; why does it happen?

If we con­sid­er Pluto’s pre­vi­ous pas­sages, 1762–1778 and 1516–1532 and even before 1269–1287, each of those peri­ods marked the end of a “way of life” and the emer­gence of a new way. A new way of what? Well, we are con­cerned with us, with we humans, so it is all about meet­ing human needs. We have for many thou­sands of years, cre­at­ed insti­tu­tion­al­ized struc­tures and roles with­in those struc­tures to meet our needs for water, food, shel­ter, cloth­ing, etc.

But behind all of Cre­ation is the one dri­ving prin­ci­ple of Spir­it, and that prin­ci­ple is for all of Cre­ation to become, to grow, to expand, to move into new forms and new realms; and if all of Cre­ation is here to grow, it will also cease­less­ly change too.

This is why and what hap­pens when Plu­to moves through Capri­corn; the Insti­tu­tions that were formed in the pre­vi­ous peri­od of Plu­to in Capri­corn (which for us was 1762–1778, and the fol­low­ing Aquar­i­an Peri­od of 1778–1798) are no longer ade­quate to meet­ing the changes in the nature of the world. The very “prob­lems” that the old hier­ar­chy of real­i­ty-forms solved, the very ways and means by which those Insti­tu­tions met human needs, those crys­tal­lized forms have become the very obsta­cle to meet­ing our needs now. The old order got us to here, but it can­not take us to there.

Not only do the means to meet our needs have to change because the con­di­tions of the world have changed (and much of that before but cer­tain­ly dra­mat­i­cal­ly now, those changes in the nature of the world have been caused by us), but we are also dif­fer­ent humans. The humans of the 1500s, became the quite dif­fer­ent humans of the 1700s, and we here in the 2000s are a vast­ly dif­fer­ent type of human than either of those. We can see ele­ments of each still liv­ing on in us, but what we dream of, what we aspire to, what we want would be hard­ly under­stand­able to some­one from the 1700s and even less so to some­one from the 1500s.

What hap­pens in each peri­od, (and we cer­tain­ly are expe­ri­enc­ing this dra­mat­i­cal­ly this year), is that the insti­tu­tion­al order becomes increas­ing­ly unable to ful­fill its func­tion to meet our needs. Increas­ing­ly from 2008 onwards, in a whole range of insti­tu­tions, whether local, region­al, state, nation­al, or cor­po­rate enti­ties, here and around the world, the very instru­ments we made to make pos­si­ble our lives and liveli­hoods, that were cre­at­ed to meet our needs have become less and less viable to the point of becom­ing hope­less fail­ures fuel­ing mount­ing crises. The sys­tems fail us; the hold­ers of author­i­ty and pow­er fail us; and we real­ize that the way we wish to live is becom­ing more impos­si­ble to have, or is already lost.

More and more, in all spheres of our soci­ety and cul­tures, peo­ple have become dis­ap­point­ed, con­fused, bit­ter, angry, and fear­ful, as the world that was no longer works. Some retreat or wish to turn back to an imag­ined “gold­en era”; some want to cre­ate a brand new world. Some will fix their aims and actions upon tear­ing it all down, while oth­ers seek to reform and make viable what is fail­ing, and many oth­ers look to the mak­ing and dawn­ing of a brand-new way.

At times of great crises, at the end of an age which we are in, you will see in stark relief the three pri­mal forces weav­ing the warp and woof of the uni­verse: The Cre­ators, The Pre­servers, and the Destroy­ers. It has always been so; it will always be so.

In sim­ple terms, and look­ing to Europe and the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, we could say the polit­i­cal-eco­nom­ic-cul­tur­al order and type of human in the 1500s was the move from Feu­dal­ism to Monar­chies; and the orders of insti­tu­tions we cre­at­ed in the 1700s was the move from Monar­chies to Par­lia­men­tary Democ­ra­cies and a world of Nation States. That very sys­tem is what is fail­ing now, and the solu­tions it was built upon to meet our needs is what is destroy­ing the beau­ti­ful hier­ar­chies of life-forms, bring­ing our world to its next great extinc­tion event. Only this time a life-form on this plan­et is to blame, us. And, since we depend upon all those so-called less­er life-forms for our lives, we face the prospect of cre­at­ing our own extinc­tion as well.

For­tu­nate­ly, but I say that with great irony, humil­i­ty, and sad­ness, we have cre­at­ed the per­fect storm in this world-wide pan­dem­ic of Covid-19. Because we are self-aware, because we know that we live in mor­tal bod­ies, noth­ing grabs the atten­tion of humans more than the immi­nent prospect of death. Moth­er nature has our atten­tion now! Once again, our insti­tu­tions have seem­ing­ly failed us; and our lead­ers have aban­doned their posts. Once again, we face not a choice but a cer­tain­ty; we must change our ways, or our ways will con­tin­ue to destroy us.

But the change we must make is not to find a cure for Covid-19, (though that is cer­tain­ly a neces­si­ty). This pan­dem­ic is just the lat­est warn­ing sign of a world out of bal­ance, a del­i­cate bal­ance that we have mas­sive­ly dis­rupt­ed and broken.

The Pan­dem­ic is a warn­ing. Yes, and one of its sig­na­ture fea­tures is that many will suc­cumb because they can­not breathe. But if we con­tin­ue to destroy the life-forms that sus­tain our abil­i­ty to breathe, from the small­est of life-forms in the oceans to the trees in the forests, we will face a world where no one can breathe.

And the same goes for how we live sus­tain­ably in meet­ing our needs for water, food, shel­ter, cloth­ing, well, lit­er­al­ly every­thing is or should be addressed and our ways changed. Or the world we will leave for those who come after us will be more and more unliv­able. That is just the plain truth; and the truth is we did this. How did we do this?

We through our intel­li­gence and crafti­ness, fig­ured out how to release the pow­er of ener­gy-forms that had been stored and locked away for mil­lions of years, in coal, oil, gas and nuclear. And we unleashed it all in the blink of an eye in geo­log­i­cal terms, so that now some 200+ years lat­er we see what we missed. We did not think of con­se­quences; we had intel­li­gence, but we lacked Wis­dom; we had ambi­tion, but we lacked Humil­i­ty. And now we are being hum­bled. The les­son we have re-learned is that we all need to become hum­bler and wis­er; we need to be more lov­ing towards our plan­et and towards one anoth­er too.

Our Blind Spot: Social Jus­tice – Nep­tune and Compassion
Yes, we have divid­ed our­selves, sep­a­rat­ed our­selves from the nat­ur­al world, from our fel­low life-forms on this plan­et; and we have equal­ly divid­ed our­selves from one anoth­er too. The same blind spot that is at the root of the pan­dem­ic and cli­mate change is also the cause of our inhu­man­i­ty to our fel­low humans. That root cause is our fail­ure to con­sid­er each one of us as part of every oth­er. The truth is that all humans for one anoth­er, and tru­ly all humans with all life-forms on this plan­et, we are all part of the Fam­i­ly of Earth. And for this con­sid­er­a­tion, we can turn to the next plan­et, (of the three out­er plan­ets rul­ing long-wave devel­op­ments), the plan­et Neptune.

Nep­tune orbits around the Sun every 164 years, spend­ing a lit­tle over 13 years in each Sign. Astrol­o­gy holds that Nep­tune rules the Sign of Pisces, and Nep­tune is in Pisces now from 2011 to 2026. I like to say that Nep­tune rules the Spir­i­tu­al Truth of One­ness, “that there is but One Life, that there is but One Spir­it”. For each of us per­son­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly it rules our Dreams, it is our most sig­na­ture spir­i­tu­al gift, the Gift of Imag­i­na­tion. How­ev­er, when we are not aligned with­in our­selves, when we lack self-con­trol and fun­da­men­tal truth to guide us, those Nep­tun­ian ener­gy-forms, those mean­ings, and mes­sages can be mis­un­der­stood or mis­ap­plied. That is why Nep­tune is also said to rule our illu­sions, delu­sions, and night­mares too.

The crises in our soci­ety with regards to injus­tice, inequal­i­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ty, inequal­i­ty of edu­ca­tion, inequal­i­ty in health­care, and the basic denial for many to have true free­dom and hap­pi­ness, all of these are the man­i­fest signs of a great Spir­i­tu­al Cri­sis here and around the world. For me, all crises ulti­mate­ly can be under­stood as spir­i­tu­al. But that means they are also the sig­nal for an epiphany, that we are expe­ri­enc­ing a leav­en­ing of Con­scious­ness, we are here at the dawn of a Spir­i­tu­al Awak­en­ing too.

When we look back to the most recent time of Neptune’s stay in Pisces from 1848–1862, we can dis­cern some pat­terns that are strik­ing­ly famil­iar to our own. Both peri­ods wit­nessed the growth of spir­i­tu­al move­ments brought about by the dis­solv­ing of bound­aries with­in var­i­ous forms of social, cul­tur­al, artis­tic, and spir­i­tu­al realms; and for many, per­son­al expe­ri­ences of the veil between worlds becom­ing thin­ner and more per­me­able became much more evident.

There is now as there was then, a grow­ing aware­ness of the injus­tices of the age, and an earnest seek­ing for a new vision and prac­tices to make a more per­fect, equal, and just world. For what is our real pur­pose here any­ways? Many wise ones over the course of cen­turies have pon­dered this. Accord­ing to the Ancient Wis­dom it sim­ply can be said to this:

What is our Purpose
What is our pur­pose on Earth? It is that every human is here to become a whole or com­plete human. Like the entire­ty of Cre­ation, we humans are ever becom­ing some­thing more, reach­ing inward­ly and out­ward­ly to under­stand and ful­fill our full poten­tial. We advance over time to a greater under­stand­ing of our­selves and of our world too, for they can­not be sep­a­rat­ed or under­stood as sep­a­rate after all. As it is said, “As above, so below”. So, whether you move deep­er into the heart of your­self, or you move fur­ther out­ward­ly to unveil the mys­ter­ies of the Uni­verse, you will find the same Truth in both realms. Whether you fol­low the path of Faith, or peel back the veil of the cos­mos by Rea­son and Sci­ence, you will come to the same under­stand­ing. All these roads lead to the same, to the One.

Spir­i­tu­al­ly, the Truth that will set you free will also make you under­stand that all you ever want­ed or need­ed was to be loved, and when you awak­en you will know that you always were! Because that is what you are made of, that is what you were made for. You were made from Uncon­di­tion­al Love; and you are here to live by Uncon­di­tion­al love. All the wise ones know this; all the wise ones live this way too. Fol­low the exam­ples of the Teach­ers; they came to show us the way.

To that end, and in truth, the real promised land we are striv­ing to reach can­not be found or made “out there”. First, it is and must be made in each of us, in each one’s heart and mind. Yet equal­ly, because we are human, because we are made by the qual­i­ty and char­ac­ter of our rela­tion­ships with one anoth­er, we are also the means for one anoth­er to become ful­ly con­scious and liv­ing embod­i­ments of the uncon­di­tion­al love that resides in each individual’s spark of the Divine. You can be self-awak­ened, but your Con­scious­ness is formed by all with whom you jour­ney. Again, there is no sep­a­ra­tion; that is the Illu­sion we must con­stant­ly dis­solve by our love.

What we face now is what we have always faced; we are here to under­stand our jour­ney and the route we have tak­en so far. What we must do is what is stay mind­ful and alert; take respon­si­bil­i­ty for what we do next. We can­not change the past; and we can­not know the future, because it is still being formed by us here and now.

The only place you can be the liv­ing spir­it is in the “Eter­nal Now”. The three great Avatars point the way, Uranus, Nep­tune, and Pluto.

By Uranus, we are here to move increas­ing­ly towards ever Freer Minds. We are to expand our under­stand­ing by free­ing our­selves from unrea­son and fear. We form our aware­ness and con­scious­ness togeth­er, as that very word Con­scious­ness means “Know­ing-Togeth­er”.

By Nep­tune, we are to live by Uncon­di­tion­al Love. We are to feel and know that who­ev­er is before me is my rela­tion, “That we are all relat­ed”. There­fore, with­out Equal­i­ty and with­out Jus­tice there is no true Love.

And by Plu­to, we are to use our Will to stay Cen­tered in our Sacred Space; and to know equal­ly that we are nev­er to vio­late the Sacred Space of any oth­er. As it is said, “Thou shall not Tres­pass”, for what­ev­er you do to any oth­er, you do to your­self, and to the One.

May the Light of Truth, Love and Under­stand­ing guide our path to the dawn­ing of this New Age.