Why do we live what we are living ?
On this site, it says on the home page : “Why do we live what we are living ?”
The aim is not to seek a definitive answer, but rather to suggest that our life has a purpose.
The idea I am developing here is that this goal can be described through a story and that in astrological counseling we can contribute to this building of the story of our lives.
In order to create this story, we can separate four aspects of what constitutes who we are :
1. Memories that have been recorded at the level of our soul
2. The history of our ancestors
3. The context and events of our childhood and adolescence
4. The direction our soul longs to go
To illustrate this, I will gather threads from my life and weave them into a story that gives meaning to what I am experiencing now.
When it comes to my soul's memories, Evolutionary Astrology provides some very interesting guidelines. My South Node is in Aries, the ruler of which is Mars, which is itself in Aries. This suggests a past where I followed my own will independently of others. The North Node in Libra conjunct Jupiter and Neptune can be seen as a need to gain spiritual insight and learn from others.
I can add a few things:
A recent vision of myself during the Crusades where I was fighting according to my faith and contemplated afterwards the destruction all around me
The feeling of having misused my Martian energy, by being ruthless and insensitive to others.
What I see in my ancestors is mainly:
On my mother's side, the destruction of the masculine energy by the death of the father of my grand father as well as his three brothers, of whom two died during the first world war
Authoritarian behavior from my father's side of the family
The loss of faith, especially on my mother's side. She was very religious when she was young but gradually lost her belief in God. At the end of her life, religion no longer interested her.
In my childhood, here are some key points:
The walks alone in the fields and the woods of my natal farm followed by my dog
The ecstasy in front of the sea at three years old ,which triggered an uninterrupted flow of words for a few hours, after a period when I no longer spoke after the death of my grand father when I was two years old
The feeling of abandonment after being sent to a Catholic boarding school at the age of six
The period of my adolescence when I wondered whether God exists or not and the final decision, at this period, that He does not exist.
When we put these 3 approaches together, it becomes easy to draw a succession of events that tell a story.
We could say that I was a believer who sincerely wanted to devote my life to God. The Crusades revealed to me the dark side of religion and I was broken to the depths of my being. I became an atheist who not only rejected religion, but also lost faith in others and sought to impose his will on them.
The idea here is not to speculate on a karmic history corresponding to a succession of previous lives. Rather, it is about drawing inspiration from images and knowledge from the past that resonate with what is emerging in my life today. These images can be adjusted and modified as I realize my potential. They can help me understand what I need to learn in this present life. From there, I can see how the situations I experience play out for me to realize what I need to learn.
In my case, this story can now help me realize:
A change was needed in the way I use my masculine energy. In her book “The Luminaries,” Liz Greene talks about a king who must endure the humiliation of slavery in order to learn to control his anger. This speaks to me because I have felt many times that anger could be a trap for me. I remember certain situations where I felt like it was better to accept an unfair judgment than to react with anger. I think life has challenged me at key times to test me on this. Today, I think I have understood what was at stake and I can trust my masculine energy, not be afraid of it.
I can accept help from others. The spiritual path is profoundly a path of solitude, as suggested by the title of Henry Corbin's book “Alone with the Alone”. But this solitude should not make us ignore the truth that can be expressed by others. Elias, who was my spiritual guide, refused to be helped by others in the name of the necessary solitude inherent to the spiritual journey. The square between Mars and the Moon in my chart expresses well the tension between independence and dependence. Pluto in Virgo is in the 4th house and the Moon forms a T-square with the nodes of the Moon. This represents the need to show humility and to say to myself “I need help or I need support ". Sometimes I can give it to myself and sometimes I can't, I need help from others.
I can trust life. I have memories that caused me to lose faith in God or in life. This can create resistance when the sky opens again and opens the doors to a new field of possibilities. I fear that a disaster will happen again and ruin my attempts to achieve my goals. Being aware of this fear is usually sufficient to avoid the external obstacles that are an expression of this fear.
But this story should not be frozen like a statue in the middle of a public garden. There is a risk of identification with a story that would mask the complexity and plasticity of reality. Everything evolves and what was a difficulty before can become a major asset. The way I lost my personal power in Elias’ group is an asset in helping people regain their own power.
There is also a risk of thinking that what happened in the past will repeat itself. When we understand the message from life, there is no reason to repeat the same mistakes again and again, we can move on to the next step.
Another trap is the rationalization defense mechanism. Rather than searching for meaning, we can find justification. I had a tendency, when I felt crushed at some point by someone, to think that it was a karmic return of my mistakes in a past life. But this is not acceptance, it is self-punishment based on guilt.
However, I believe that a story helps us balance the optimism of spiritual vision or dreams with awareness of our past traumas or limitations.
At the same time, it is important to realize that life will respond to the sincerity of our desire. There is a dialogue between the self and the Higher Self. It is not just me alone who wants to achieve the best of myself, it is the Universe itself, which created me, which seeks to ensure that I realize my potential in order to contribute to the Universe in return.
I don't think that life on earth is just a school where we learn lessons before moving on to other planes of reality, as some spiritual teachings say. Life contributes to the life that takes place within us and outside of us. Life is first and foremost there to be lived and I am amazed and infinitely grateful to be part of this Creation.
