Meaning, Soul Connection & Magickal Living
I seem to write a lot about meaning - the search/hunger for it, means to create it, etc. - and I suppose I’m telling you about me more than anything when I do this. And yet I see in people I meet, clients who come to me for astrological counseling, and in all the stories of people living lives that take them far from themselves only to find out it might have just been the worst thing they could have done. These are the stories you find in any popular media outlet about people doing the things that terrify us, the things that we’re terrified that we also could do.*
In my universe, “meaning” is a mode of being that reflects having identified and aligned with a sense of purpose. From the standpoint of the human need for meaning, it doesn’t matter what that purpose is (unless you’re concerning yourself with politics - national, social, religious or otherwise). If you have a sense of what life is for, there’s a certain sense of fulfillment, even as with that vision you can see that there’s much work to be done to manifest that sense of purpose in real-world terms. In my work, I find a direct correlation of a true sense of meaning (in contrast with some kind of bone to pick with the world, the universe or God that can in a hasty glance be mistaken for meaning) with a person’s connection to soul.
One of my favorite movies is “Contact,” based on the novel by Carl Sagan. The two main characters are a scientist and a spiritual teacher, each with an unshakeable conviction there’s a greater context into which humanity fits. Predictably, the scientist believes the context is among the many life forms in other parts of the galaxy that must, based on the odds, exist. Also predictably, the spiritual teacher sees that context in terms of the existence of God. Some of it you might see coming from a mile away - both are fully devoted to their respective perspectives. There’s a bit of dialogue at one point between these two that spoonfeeds yet makes wonderfully & abundantly clear to us the argument between Gemini and Sagittarius, and better yet, shows the truth that they’re each doing the same thing (seeking & using knowledge in ways they think are the best ways) but in totally opposite ways (the gala’s balcony scene, in case you’re curious).
There’s something comforting to me about that movie, being pretty Gemini-Sagittarius & 3rd-9th house myself. I thought to write about this because I was recently guided to a particular book at a local book store, Soulcraft: Crossing in the Mysteris of Nature and Psyche by Bill Plotkin, New World Library, 2003. According to the back cover, Plotkin is a “depth psychologist, ecotherapist and wilderness guide.” The short story of this book may be impossible for me to relay to you at this point; all I can offer is that when I pick up this book, I’m comforted that there are people working toward helping others find the meaning and reconnection to soul that they seek.
Plotkin works with people at the level of helping them reconnect to their own souls by reconnecting to nature. The meaning of life as it inspires any single person can be found, Plotkin seems to be saying, via a healing journey deep inside ourselves to recapture our sense of soul, and that that sense of soul is intimately connected with nature and the soul of the earth. The souls of humans are intimately connected that of the earth, he seems to say.
In my life, I’m being called to simplify in many ways. I presume this is related to a growing need to reconnect with what I find meaningful. A few weeks ago I sold my car, with the idea of replacing it with a motorcycle, which isn’t falling into place. So, I’m a little slower in my travels, and I get there in ways I haven’t used since moving to LA four years ago. How I travel, where and why are being called into question because, I see, former methods and directions no longer work for or serve me.
I’m also being called to sit for a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat, ten days of sitting in silence in order to, I seem to be gathering, witness the patterns of the mind and get behind them. This seems a natural extension of the deconditioning work I’ve been engaged in, but on an intense level. I wondered if with Jupiter stationing soon on my Sagittarius Mercury if this was the best idea for me, and I’m pretty sure it is. This transit isn’t only about outward expression, but also about the workings of the conscious mind. And as Jupiter calls for risk in order to expand, I can report that the idea of sitting for ten days in silent meditation, without any of the numerous things in my arsenal I can use to distract myself, is very challenging. But I think I need to risk this in order to reconnect to myself, or perhaps connect to myself for the first time.
If you’ve been reading these posts, you know that my astrological counseling work has taken a turn from intellectual and emotional counseling to become centered in helping people to release their conditioning and connect with their true selves, what we can call “center.” All problems that people come to me with, things they desire to change about their lives, are rooted in beliefs informed by conditioning. What makes my contribution to the conversation on conditioning unique is the multi-life view I take on it: Your early environment in this life echoes the conditioning you took on in other lives, and from a bird’s eye view with some honest, deep work, you can heal the present and the past at the same time, and astrology is a great tool to see those patterns and beliefs and get behind them. And you can’t really heal one without the other which, if you really want to know, requires approaching your self and life and karmic journeys as an organic now, an always-blooming present.
On the personal level, all this leads to my thoughts about my own upcoming Pluto square. A friend pointed out that it can be useful to use wider orbs than I’m wont to for these long, slow transits, which would put me in my Pluto square at present (it’s 6 degrees currently from being exact). I certainly see some experiences over the last year or so as fitting with the challenge of (transiting) Pluto in Sagittarius in the 3rd squaring (natal) Pluto in Libra in the 12th. I’m working with the understanding (that I announce at every opportunity, I’m sure you’re gathering) that if we don’t work consciously with energies, or at least remain open to learning, change and growth, we can feel used by them. Months ago I had some paranoia about negative manifestations of my Pluto square, but am seeing what I can do to charge ahead with consciousness. And this is inspiring and energizing my considerable ranting about the possiblities of living proactively that you’re reading about in this “blog” place.
So, whether I’m in my Pluto square or not might be up for debate. But I’m bound and determined that when it does come around if it’s not here already, I’m not going to settle into old patterns of not allowing my natal Pluto stuff into awareness so that I end up feeling used by the energy. If you keep reading my posts here, I think you’ll get a load of reports of what I’m calling “magickal living,” an approach that basically steps into conscious awareness of life from the astrological point of view. The goal is not to find out about the self from what astrology can tell me (an unimaginitive, empty, numbed-out consumerist standpoint), but working with who I am and am becoming and choosing to allow the challenges for change I’m presented with, based in what I learn about astrology as a language of life (an imaginitive, inspired and creative tack based in the reality of my humanity as a dynamic enterprise).
*The best way to look at the news, by the way, if you venture to admit its poisonous paranoia into your consciousness, is not as a single meaningful statement about what the world is like, but as a series of discrete statements about how some of us choose to create our worlds organized into an attempt to tell you what the world is like so that you will be terrified and buy more ketchup, cars, mascara and other goods to try to cover up your fear that your life is meaningless and that you’ll never find any meaning.
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July 24, 2007 By Tom Jacobs