Fasten Your Seatbelts and Put on Your Gravity Boots

‘When the ego weeps for what it has lost . . . the soul rejoices for what it has found.” Sufi Proverb

As I write this on Monday morning, August 24, Mars is making an exact square to Saturn kicking off what I’ll call the Mars Phase of our accelerated evolution. Over the next two weeks, Mars will be putting on the brakes, slowing down to pause and turn retrograde on September 9th. As if things aren’t intense now, the upcoming retrograde will turn up the heat. In some ways we could predict that. Our election cycle here in the U.S. is coming to a climax. We have something to focus on. In a couple of months we are going to vote for our future and our choice is crucial.

Before we take a close look at Mars, I want to emphasize the import of planetary placements. The signs of the Zodiac are grouped into three modalities: Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable. Cardinal signs begin new cycles of growth; Fixed signs stabilize and integrate change at a safe pace; Mutable signs are fluid and open to change. Planets in these signs prepare us for our next growth spurt.

Planets are strongest in their “home” signs and right now Saturn is at home in Capricorn, a Cardinal sign. Mars is hanging out in his Cardinal sign – Aries. Neptune is in his watery depths in Pisces, a Mutable sign. For the past month the Sun was in Leo where it reigns supreme. Energetic influence is very strong right now. Saturn is showing us our limits and our ego attachments, as well as the weaknesses in our institutions and structures. Neptune is dissolving boundaries and providing a chaos of illusion. We are swimming in a sea of misinformation. Mars in Aries is bringing the heat and the fire. Transformation is afoot!

Mars and Saturn in traditional astrology are known as the “Malefics.” I don’t believe any planet is all good or bad. Every planet, like every function of consciousness, operates on a spectrum. There is an unconscious, dysfunctional way of expressing energy as well as an ideal, principled and spiritual way. There is a full spectrum of possibilities everywhere in between. But dysfunctional Saturn and Mars can wreak havoc.

Saturn brings up our ego, our unresolved issues from the past, and shows us what isn’t working. It can be a great source of frustration until we agree to hear its message. A square from Mars is going to turn up the volume.  I have been stressing all year that our future depends on us and the inner work we do to lift ourselves out of the prison of ego consciousness into the freedom and light and wonder of awakened consciousness. This choice is available to every single one of us. Life is offering us an opportunity to take a quantum leap, to wake up and step into a new perspective based on a new frequency of consciousness.

What an exciting adventure! We are on the brink. A doorway is opening in December and we can step through it into a new world with new awareness and open hearts. We all have our own vision of a happy future. Aquarian energy is already supporting us to awaken to our connection with all we behold. We are a glorious whole temporarily splintered into factions.

If you listened to the podcast I did on Modern Mystics, you know about Ilya Prigogine, Nobel winner in Chemistry for his Theory of Dissipative Structures. In essence structures break down, or dissipate, when they can no longer handle the energy that has been added to them. Think of our society. We have reached a level of complexity that has outgrown government, outgrown competitive ways of living together, outgrown the ability of our Earth to sustain us, literally outgrown in population what we can, or choose to sustain.

Look at the polarization and forget about the issues for a moment. Prigogine described experiments in which he observed the structure (Saturn) of chemicals under a microscope. As he added heat (Mars) to a chemical substance or compound, the basic structure began to shift. At first it would grow, opening up more space (Neptune) within the structure. Eventually, however, it could no longer hold together and it burst into spirals, so to speak. (Uranus) Transformation happens through increased separation. Eventually a new structure is formed that can accommodate the increased energy.

There is so much here. This metaphor of transformation can strengthen our faith. Polarization and separation are a stage in a process of metamorphosis. We are outgrowing our civilization’s structure. Our center has broken, we are flying apart centrifugally. The fringe groups are trying to hold it together with vast conspiracy theories. Democrats are cannibals? Really? Come on! But our polarization is not a bad thing. It is prelude to something far better, albeit unknown. This is where Faith comes in. (Jupiter)

One of the most reassuring qualities of the Democratic Convention was seeing decent, honest, hard-working, open-hearted people from all of our states and territories. We got to connect with our people. All we see in the news and on TV is anger, domination, confrontation, violence, rage and finger-pointing. After a while it’s easy to believe this is what we have become, but NO! that is NOT who we are. We got to see that at the Convention. I loved the diversity and inclusiveness, the human stories of struggle and triumph, the touching courage of children and young adults displaying their dreams and hopes. Their goodwill was a comforting reminder of the best in our American character.

But I digress. Where and how does Mars fit into the picture? Mars is our impulse to action. It is the masculine energy of doing. I heard an astrologer say that Mars is there to do the bidding of Venus, to get her what she desires. How did that get so turned on its head?

Mars is what gets us up in the morning, the part that pushes us out the door to encounter the world. A healthy Mars functions in service to the Will, symbolized by the Sun which is dual in nature. The Sun’s glyph is a circle with a dot in the center. We can look at that from two perspectives. The Circle is the whole and the dot is our ego self. Or the Circle is the personality, ego and all, and the dot is the spark of divine light within.

Whatever way we choose, we are both human and divine. For Mars to function optimally he must be in service to the Divine Will, or Plan, or Evolutionary Impulse. When Mars is in service to the ego, he can get pretty nasty. So this month we’re going to focus on Mars and the ego. Remember the ego is averse to change. The ego’s original directive was to keep the subject safe and alive. As it grew it began to get greedy. It wanted total control. And we gave in because we didn’t know any better. We didn’t know that the lies the ego whispers to us were not the truth. The ego is the original source of Fake News! It’s time to get the message. What is flickering on the wall “out there” is a reflection of what’s going on “in here.”

The next two months are about waking up. And Mars is thrusting us from behind. We are all experiencing an influx of energy and it is going to get stronger. How do we handle that energy? What are productive, humanitarian ways to express it? How can we use that energy to grow, to wake up, to see the truth behind the veils?

Reality has been shrieking at us for a few years. Over the next two months it is going to roar. We will have the opportunity to observe the way in which we respond. Do we react from some outworn subconscious conditioning? Do we have a “go-to” emotion, like anger or fear, a typical stance like blame or denial. All of our egos are going to be challenged BIG TIME in the next two months. Can we make a commitment to pause and observe our impulses, to examine our motivations, our conditioned reactions and ask ourselves honestly – is this serving me? Is this serving the future I dream of? Is this serving humanity?

As for the gravity boots, it’s so important to stay grounded and that means taking care of our bodies, giving them everything they need, even if it means overcoming resistance and laziness. We need to eat well, keep hydrated, get enough sleep. We need to exercise, move our bodies, tone our muscles and keep limber. Yoga would really be a support at this time. Fortunately the Sun has entered earthy Virgo, the sign in which we pick out the wheat from the chaff, the valuable from the superfluous, the supportive from the self-destructive. We hone our discernment.

Don’t forget meditation. Among the many benefits of a meditation practice is opening up space within. Our conceptual minds are crammed full of repetitive thoughts, conditioned beliefs, ego defenses, and a surfeit of useless data. Remember Prigogine – the transformation process happens when the system opens up optimum space and allows the energy to transform it. We need to open up inner space to make room for change. And so that means cleaning out the basement. (Pluto) It means sitting in stillness and becoming intimate with our inner world. It means sinking down into our core and reconnecting with our true, essential selves – the spiritual pilgrim within who came here to be part of this momentous event, to awaken and connect with the truth that we are One. This is where we find our strength, our goodness and wisdom, love and compassion that will never abandon us.

This will be a time of letting go, but remember the Sufi Proverb and know that your soul is rejoicing despite the ego’s suffering. It will also be a time of waking up and that is a cause for celebration.