There have definitely been events in the past week or so that beg some questions about spirituality — in the form of religion in particular. This being a column about spirituality, I’ve definitely been begging my own questions about where I am with it all and what I might have to say about more ‘terrorist’ attacks and a world gone mad.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

But here’s the thing: I’m entirely disconnected from it. For better or worse, I am entirely unengaged with the world stage.

I know I’ve been in this spot before. Hell, I know I’ve written about it here before. I have made choices to largely stay out of world events and politics, although I do my best to tune into events at the local level. I also know that my version of disengagement is still better informed than many people’s version of engagement. This round, however, I am actively choosing not to read or watch.

It is all so far beyond surreal at this point — more attacks? More rhetoric? More crazy, overblown and idiotic responses from conservative America? Paying attention to it grates on every aspect of my being. I’ve hung out with several highly intelligent, heart-centered, genuinely concerned and well-informed friends this week, and when they start talking about Paris or Beirut every alarm goes off in my body. Nails on a chalkboard.

My inner voices — the most grounded, sensible and trustworthy of them – say: don’t listen, don’t go there, it’s all false, don’t fall into it. I see ‘conspiracy’ theories and discussion of it being a false flag event, and the voices say something along the lines of: Duh. But don’t go there. Don’t engage.

I wonder occasionally if that isn’t the sign of dissociation or avoidance. But the thing is — it’s not that the urge is to run away or block it out because it would be too much of a buzz kill or too overwhelming. The urge is to stay clear of what feels to me like a chainmail shroud of lies and deceit. My urge is to hug and love and continue working with people one-on-one and do anything I can to counteract the heavy, grating falsity of it all.

But how can all of that suffering be false? What kind of privilege leads me to ignore and reject in such a way? I know that my work here on this Earth is to hold space for grief, trauma and transformation. I also know that my work here is to anchor love and light. There is a flux between the two within my inner world.

The fact of the matter is that my life feels so good right now. Energy is finally moving, optimism is shining brightly, and things are happening personally and professionally that are exhilarating and affirming. The need to stay planted firmly in that and to be present with it feels like a mandate. But again — what if I’m just avoiding? Or being narcissistic?

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Does that even matter? I’m sure it does in some ways. The intense disconnect between world events and my own existence creates a dissonance, but I’m only intellectually aware of that. I don’t feel the dissonance right now.

The only dissonance I have felt is really in how often I am having the urge to rub people’s backs right between the shoulder blades, softly loving the heart space, telling our wounded, fearful hearts that it’s going to be ok.

This is not always appropriate behavior, given that sometimes the urge is occurring with people I barely know. I’ve taken this past week to just coming out and asking if I can do that when I feel the need to hold that heart space. Someone remarked to me last night that it felt like I was actually massaging their heart. I asked if that was OK and they said it felt amazing. It felt amazing to me, too.

There is so much sadness and suffering and madness in the world. There has been for such a long time. My heart often feels all of it at sometimes blistering and unbearable levels. I’ve also noticed that much of the time, when crisis seems to be amping up in the world at large, my heart can flood with love and hope. Perhaps it’s my own personal balancing act. I don’t know.

What I do know is that the Sun is shining today, and life feels golden and full of potential. I feel un-tethered in time and yet grounded. Perhaps phases like this allow for some stockpiling of love and light so that when the personal cycle turns again, there is something to look back on and something to look forward to. I hope that wherever you are in this process you can take a few moments to breathe and slow it down, finding some solace in the quiet, and finding space to feel a little of whatever it is that makes your heart feel calm or happy.

By Amanda Moreno

I’ve been hosting a monthly AstroCircle for the past several months. After going back and forth about how to best present an ongoing astrological workshop in a way that caters to varying levels of experience, I decided this format would be the best way to go.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

Each month we look at a particular theme, typically chosen based on current transits. I do some lecture, we do a lot of imaginal exercises, some personal sharing and storytelling, we involve oils and stones and images, and have some time for open discussion. I leave each session excited and inspired.

When pondering what to teach for the October circle, I decided to just ask the universe for direct insight. Direct insight seems to be pretty rare, so when it happens — especially when I ask for it — I pay attention. It became quite clear that the universal request was that I teach about Uranus. I didn’t quite understand why, as recent circles have been very current-transit oriented, but went about preparing anyway.

Uranus is probably my favorite planet, although I do have to give the disclaimer that I am a person who throws around the terms ‘favorite’ and ‘love’ quite freely and enthusiastically. I do identify as non-monogamous, after all. Plenty of love to go around.

Uranus aspects pretty much all of the major planets, the angles and some asteroids in my chart. My sun is in Aquarius, which is co-ruled by Uranus and Saturn, a planetary pair that is integral to bringing structures to conscious form and then testing the limits of what we think is possible in order to grow. I would consider myself to be a Uranian type. But what does that mean?

When I think of Uranus and Aquarius, I tend to think first about liberation, de-conditioning and individuation. Jung’s theory of individuation speaks to the process of hearing the call of the soul, answering the call, and then integrating unconscious and conscious contents in order to become “who we are meant to be.” This involves liberating from the Saturnian structures and conditioning that are not in alignment with this call.

The concept of hearing the call of the soul sounds somewhat romantic, but it’s often uncomfortable, isolating and therefore avoided entirely. How many people do you know who embrace their difference willfully and enthusiastically, especially those who buck societal conventions in big ways?

The process of individuation, therefore, is associated with de-conditioning and liberating from the known. At the same time, and perhaps because of this de-conditioning process, individuation can be an isolating and lonely experience. Many people do not respond consciously to the pull to individuate because the response can create a lot of insecurity, as breaking down Saturnian structures is wont to do. Here we can see the Aquarian themes of the rebel or outsider coming to the surface.

As the higher octave of Mercury, Uranus represents long-term memory and is therefore also associated with past life memories. Whereas Saturn represents the boundaries of our conscious awareness, Uranus represents the higher mind or personal unconscious — the long view of the memories of our soul’s individuation process.

In the natal chart, the placement of Uranus can indicate where these de-conditioning or liberation processes can be worked through in our lives in a unique way. It is where we can create our own mythology. It is also where we can see karmic triggers that have been traveling with us for many lifetimes.

In Evolutionary Astrology, aspects to Uranus, the 11th house and Aquarius are all indicators of mental trauma. This is different from Plutonian trauma, which is primarily seen as emotional and psychological, although there is some overlap. Uranus represents the shock that takes us out of ourselves, the disassociation connected with the ‘flight’ side of the ‘fight or flight’ response. In less trauma-focused Aquarian terms, it is known as gaining perspective and taking the long view.

Quite honestly, I’m sometimes hesitant to write about trauma especially to a general audience. Therefore it might be worthwhile here to mention two things. First, it’s always helpful to keep in mind that when we are looking at a chart through a specific lens, it is not the only lens.

Second, the reincarnation or karmic lens invites us to bear in mind the fact that human history is full of some pretty horrific events. In my belief system, that helps me to understand that many people are born with a certain amount of PTSD. Perhaps some of us are here to work through that, and some are not. For those who fall in the former category, the Uranus-as-trauma-signature filter can be a useful way of bringing awareness to patterns. Mark Jones’ Healing the Soul and Patricia Walsh’s Understanding Karmic Complexes are fantastic resources for understanding Uranus in this way.

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The other day I was pondering Uranus’ correspondence with The Fool in the tarot. A tarot mentor of mine once told me that she sees The Fool as the scariest card in the tarot because it indicates an entirely new beginning and stepping off into the unknown.

As the card in the deck that is numbered zero and therefore falls at the end as well as the beginning, it completes the circle. The Fool arrives just after the mastery signified by the final card in the tarot, The Universe, which is a card also corresponding with Saturn. The structures have been identified and are ready to be tested, the limits are once again ready to be pushed beyond; and The Fool, that fantastic Uranian complex, is either greeted willfully and with conscious intention, or else a lightning strike bolts us in the next phase.

In my natal chart, Uranus lies in the 4th house in Scorpio. Themes of sudden loss of family members through traumatic death have been consistent since my early childhood. My life seems in many ways to be an experiment in shrugging off conditioning about what family looks like. Whether I’m inherently the black sheep or have consciously chosen to be so, in this life I get to create a new myth of what ‘blood ties’ look like. I am learning a lot about sudden loss and change.

Two days before I was set to lead the Uranus AstroCircle, I got a call from my mom who let me know that a family member had died, suddenly and traumatically. I was plunged back into the Uranian realm, with transiting Saturn having just moved away from my natal Uranus, which lies in Scorpio.

I then understood a bit more about the universe’s directive to have me focus once again on a Uranian configuration that really is at the crux of my natal chart. The AstroCircle was rescheduled, and I had a chance once again to revisit the archetype and my lived experience of it.

I’m not actually at a point in my life where writing out all of my Uranus stories seems like a great idea. I was, however, compelled to type out my thoughts, once again not entirely sure why, but trusting in the process. Hopefully it’s helpful in some way; I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic.

By Amanda Moreno

In the past week I have come across two articles condemning some current memes that I happen to at least partially agree with. One is “everything happens for a reason.” The other is the concept of radical self-love.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

Since reading the critiques I’ve been thinking a lot about the importance of keeping context and privilege in mind.

I’ve also been thinking about the ways we seem to have a compulsion towards vilifying ‘the other’; head straight into conquer/war/polarization mode; and generally conflate any kind of belief with religion — and therefore with primitive (and ultimately uncivilized) thinking. All are very problematic. It can also be problematic to discuss these things in a way that doesn’t essentially recreate that dynamic.

In the first article, Everything Doesn’t Happen For a Reason, the thing is: I agree with most of what he’s saying, some of it quite emphatically. The importance of standing with a loved one in a time of grief and being present with them without offering solutions or saving them is something I write and talk about often.

The article was really intriguing to me and I had to push my own assumptions out of the way to some extent. I agree that telling someone that “everything happens for a reason” when they are in an acute state of grief can be seen as an act of violence. But I also do believe that everything happens for reason — and for me, it is not a form of bypassing but rather of orienting to my situation.

That outlook needs to be hushed during certain periods. In Steven Forrest’s Inner Sky, his discussion of the archetype of Scorpio touches on the fact that while the Scorpionic type loves to dig deeper in order to truly understand the psyche and ultimately arrive at the truth, the digging can become compulsive. We also need the [Taurean] time to just sit in the grass and breathe and eat some food. When the digging becomes compulsive, we can get moody and broody and depressed. Sometimes we have to stop searching for the truth — or for meaning — and just be.

“Everything happens for a reason” can be used as a crutch or avoidance mechanism, especially when being offered from someone else when you are in the process of grieving. It’s both being used as a crutch by the other person, while at the same time being offered as one for the grieving. I don’t think it’s helpful when being proposed as a source of comfort — at least not for most people.

I remember the first time an astrologer said to me, “when it gets really rough, just imagine yourself somewhere as a being of light looking down at the struggles you’re going through, and remember: you chose this.” Those words were incredibly helpful to me, but I also remember thinking that I kind of wanted to suggest he never ever say that to anyone else.

I also suppose the “everything happens for a reason” concept is an offshoot of the idea that God — and I do mean capital “G” God — won’t give us more than we can handle. Part of the rebellion against the phrase is linked into a deep sense of betrayal by god that permeates the collective, and a deep distrust of religion and religious thinking. And again — sometimes those wounds need to be gone through and processed, and not provided with the Band Aid of someone else’s beliefs.

For me, the languaging is something more along the lines of James Hillman’s idea of “psychological faith.” I don’t believe I’ll be given more than I can handle, although there are times when I have to shake my head at the universe. And hell, maybe it is a crutch. But I also know that in some of the work I do and in some of the things I’ve gone through in life, having faith that there is meaning in it, even when I can’t see it for some time, is an immensely powerful thing.

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I also really love this, from the article:

“Some things in life cannot be fixed, they can only be carried.”

I don’t see that as being antithetical to a belief that everything happens for a reason. I myself can hold both beliefs and also go through grieving processes, although sometimes a pause in looking for the meaning of an event or challenge is very necessary. I’m in one of those phases now.

In reading the article about the dangers of the ‘radical self-love’ theme, titled “Positive Attitude” Bullshit: on the Dangers of “Radical Love,” I was once again able to see the author’s point. But again, something about the tone and the language really bothered me. There is a militancy that reminds me of lessons of the Aries-Libra nodal axis.

On the one hand, the expression of voice in this deeply personal and yet collectively relevant way can be so important and relatable. When people who can articulate complex thoughts can write, they should. Writing and language are huge conveyors of meaning. They help us to understand ourselves, giving us a treasure map to help us find truth.

But something in the portrayal still feels somewhat dangerous to me. Perhaps it’s just because I totally believe in the radical self-love thing, while at the same time I am not ever even slightly aligned with the kind of ‘woo’ Oprah preaches (as discussed in the article), even though I have respect for her.

Again, the issue of context comes up. The Aries instinct to express is vitally important — but I think there is a difference between proclaiming your own truth versus giving into what feels like war-time, polarized thinking: These people are wrong and awful and need to be silenced.

The author of this article hits on a topic that I know I’ve participated in several times at Planet Waves. Are slogans such as Radical Self-Love or the notion that meditation can fix everything really appropriate when we think about people who are struggling to get food and water? It’s a very privileged pedestal we get to stand on as we cheer about self-love, yoga and stopping to breathe deep. Remaining sensitive to the context and the fact that this isn’t a one-size-fits-all, end-all-be-all belief is vital.

So much exists in soundbyte form. The tendency towards polarized/football-game mentality seems insidious, even among intellectuals and so many of our strongest mainstream thinkers. Again, I think all of these forms of self-expression are incredible and helpful and necessary in some ways. But seeing our tendency towards pitting ourselves against the ‘other’, vilifying each other, and then starting to strike down has started to make me feel like we’re entering another phase of witch hunts. Hopefully without the actual physical manifestations of punishment this time.

I repeat: this is a loaded, complex and layered topic. Having opportunities to question my own biases and the lenses through which I see things and my own assumptions are important to me, and are opportunities I probably need to latch onto more often.

By Amanda Moreno

I’m sitting in my bedroom, on my bed, trying to write. My bed is pushed up against two big windows, affording me a view of my backyard from two floors up — a backyard that is currently being besieged with gusty wind and pelting rain. It’s a perfect late-October Seattle day.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

I’ve missed the rain and moodiness so much, as we’ve had yet another year of seemingly endless summer. I’m also grateful for the moments right now that are allowing me to just sit and breathe and sink into myself, something I’ve been avoiding for a few weeks.

So thank you, Planet Waves, for providing me with required ‘sit-down-and-reflect’ time each week! And my apologies for being MIA last week. I don’t like doing that.

Between mid-August and mid-October I felt the light coming back in after the onslaught of Saturn in Scorpio. That transit was everything I dreamed it could be and more — and some of those dreams were, in fact, more on the nightmarish end of the spectrum. Luckily, one of the beautiful things about being a believer in astrology is having a knowledge of timing, cycles and purpose.

I can’t understate, however, just how shocking it was when that light started coming back in — in a positive way that just made me want to play! That remembrance of what it’s like not to have a tourniquet twisted around my emotional body provided me with a sense of momentum that was sorely needed.

I’m not naive enough to have ever thought the transit was over completely, but I so enjoyed that two-month period of feeling more like myself than I had in years — but better, somehow. Stronger, more centered, more in my power.

Then I experienced somewhat of an…aftershock. It came in the form of a death in the family. It wasn’t a death that was entirely unexpected, but it was traumatic and still had that ‘out of the blue’ feeling to it. My family is no stranger to sudden, traumatic death. After all of the writing I’ve been doing about patterns and complexes, this sure did provide the opportunity for me to revisit some of those. Again. Thanks, universe!

The grieving process on this death was punctuated with my body giving in to a cold. Not a bad one, just one that forced me inside, with a focus on self-care. It’s so interesting to me that when ‘bad things happen,’ our society encourage us to ‘take care’ of ourselves by indulging a lot of the time. For example, in my case: death happened, girlfriends came over and then took me out for nachos (my favorite) and margaritas (the cucumber one was amazing). Are nachos and margaritas the best thing I could offer my body? Probably not. Did they help my soul? Yes, almost as much as going to see live music played by some of my best friends.

But still, there is a dissonance there. My inner six year old is pretty into mac n’ cheese at the moment, and my current 35-year-old self is weighing out a cost/benefit analysis in terms of the havoc that might wreak on my gut — while also wondering if an almond croissant might help.

I wouldn’t say this has been an intense grieving process at all, however. I said goodbye the recently departed a while back, as I’ve had to do with so many blood relations. The initial grief period has been spent a little bit disassociated, going through the motions, paying a lot of attention to the totally rad coloring books my roommate brought me while watching “Sister Wives” and “The Leftovers,” and feeling grateful that my various employers are fairly aware of the cycles of my life so far (which tend to include a fairly consistent amount of crisis), and are extraordinarily supportive and patient.

I have, however, been more in touch with my own triggers around death and loss — and lack of feeling connected to a family. Also, some deeper questions are arising that I’m not quite prepared to go into just yet, be it here or even just with myself, in my own room, watching a storm.

Part of that unwillingness has to do with giving myself a little more time to just let my defense mechanisms do what they’re doing. Part of that unwillingness has to do with observing the ‘old scripts’ coming back in, and not wanting to charge them up, even though they can seem valid at times. Which, I suppose, is why part of that unwillingness comes from the surreality of life at times, and a need to grapple with the fact that, yes, another series of events just happened that are painful and hard and that seem to just… keep happening in my life. I’m not quite sure what to do with that.

Well, yes I am. For now, I observe the fact that I feel more settled into that reality and able to cope. I continue forward, feeling grateful that I don’t feel like this event and these past few weeks indicate a total departure from the feeling of lightness and emergence, just a little detour. I’m existing with the knowledge that I don’t really want to tell the story of this death — whether that is because I’m denying it, or just because I need more space from it and from people’s reactions (which are rightfully heavy, especially if they know my history).

I remind myself that we are headed into the dark season, that the veils are thin (as evidenced by a bunch of things jumping off of my ancestors altar last night, thankyouverymuch), and that I have a pattern of emotional intensity — if not all-out distortion — at this time of year.

Life is so weird, so surreal, so beautiful, and sometimes so downright hard. Sometimes I really hate thinking in terms of patterns and sometimes I’m grateful for the awareness of them, even when that doesn’t seem to change them.

Happy Samhain, y’all. May we learn what we’re meant to, and may the souls of our ancestors and loved ones move into the light.

By Amanda Moreno

This week I have been thinking about patterns. I’ve been noticing old patterns coming up again in many spheres of my life. It’s kind of annoying, really, but life seems to be built on these patterns. I feel fortunate to be able to bring awareness to them even when I’m frustrated by the fact that simple awareness doesn’t seem to change them.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

I’ve also spent some time reading The Soul Speaks: The Therapeutic Potential of Astrology by Mark Jones. As is always the case, Mr. Jones’ work resonates at the deepest core of who I am, speaking to just about everything I’m interested in.

In the book, he references the work of James Hollis, a Jungian analyst. Hollis discusses the expectation that a person tends to have upon entering a therapeutic container, be it traditional therapy or an astrological consultation: that some magic will occur as the therapist traipses into the client’s psychic space, exorcising personal demons and promoting instantaneous healing.

In response to this expectation, Hollis points out that there is no guarantee against future suffering, that we have to be willing to disassemble our defenses in order to make progress, and that that progress will likely be slow going. Our original issues tend to stay with us through our entire lives, even if they change form. Jones takes the commentary further to illuminate the perils of having the astrologer-therapist accept the role of being magician.

Not really a strong platform for advertising therapy, is it?

As resistant as I’ve been to the idea that change is so slow, I also hear a truth in it. Especially when I combine it with my understanding of karma.

In the Vedantic teachings they talk about Samskara and Vasana — two kinds of karmic imprints. Vasana is more like a subtle tendency, whereas Samskara is a wound that is associated with the concept of karmic gravity. Samskara is based on trauma and is repetitive karma. It is based on impulses that we could not complete in past lives and that therefore get replayed over and over again. This is the essence of most of our karma, and part of the reason patterns change so slowly is because there is a weight to them that causes repetition.

According to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, when consciousness leaves the body and is no longer rooted in the dense structures of the body, it is able to create reality based on thought instantaneously. This is why the Tibetans put such emphasis on ‘dying well,’ and on being aware of the transition: so that as our consciousness transfers out of the body we are able to traverse the afterlife states in a way that facilitates our healing, and transfer into another life without the weight of so much karma. A truly incredible documentary on the process can be found here.

The theory, as well as my experience in past-life regression work, would say that when we die unconsciously (as so many of us do), we transition with all of that weight. We die thinking, “why did he leave me” or “I never have enough,” or “I’ll never get out of this.” These thoughts create reality in the afterlife. We transition through the afterlife often without knowing what’s happened. The weight of the emotional and physical content remains as imprints in our energy bodies, which reincarnate with us in the next life. The cycle continues.

So yes, patterns change slowly. They have a weight to them.

I have a particular relationship pattern I’ve been working with consciously for about five years now, surrounding my fear of abandonment and loss. I’ve done ritual around it many times, worked on it in therapy and regression, and gotten understanding about it through astrology. It retained a charge for a long time at all levels, however. I would have physical reactions when it was triggered, in the form of back and neck pain; emotional reactions in the form of sobbing breakdowns; and mental reactions in the form of my mind racing, which just increased my anxiety.

A few weeks ago something happened to trigger the pattern. Afterwards, I found myself walking down the street, thinking about what had happened, when I suddenly realized: I wasn’t in pain. I wasn’t struggling to breathe under the onslaught of anxiety. I didn’t feel like crying at all. All that still remained was my awareness of the fact that my mind was trying to engage its loop of racing thoughts. The emotional and physical charges, however, were no longer there. I clapped my hands with glee and ran off to the metaphysical store where I work to share with a friend.

That’s not to say the pattern is entirely gone. I’ve felt it rearing its head as life has continued throwing me triggers. The astrological counseling, ritual work and everything else I’d done to try and change the pattern had all combined together with time and perseverance to help me move through the pattern. It’s not gone, not forgotten — but something has shifted.

My experience of that shift goes a long way towards mediating the frustration I sometimes feel when I seem to be stuck in a loop, with outside forces exerting the same pressure in the same spots over and over again. Time will tell as to the long-term effects. But for now, it felt like a great example of the Virgo-Pisces axis that is so emphasized right now: recognizing a pattern, and letting it go.