Last-minute thoughts before Pluto splits Sagittarius
1. Thirteen years might be a long time in human consciousness years, but might not be enough to rreeaallllyy intuit the truth. We’ve been trying on for size different versions of Truth, as well as different ways of arriving at it.
2. I’m pretty relieved now that I can stop trying to figure out what’s true. My job now is clearly to start building stuff - no more of this sitting around and checking in with my intuition, no more digging behind how things work. I mean, do you know how tiring all that fluffly perhaps-not-work is?
3. In honor of Pluto, I’m considering building a ladder down to hell.
Once I collected months’ worth of hair a roommate had brushed from her divinely adorable and wonderful cat and carefully rolled it together, a la dreds. I displayed this freak show entrant on the livingroom mantle, and when visitors asked what the disgusting snake-like lint thing was, I told them I was building a ladder to heaven from the cat’s hair, since she was so divinely adorable and wonderful, etc.
But now, it’s time to get serious. No more cat hair-as-joke lying in wait for unsuspecting visitors - no more frivolous games. Now is the time to earnestly build mental, physical and emotional structures to reflect what I learned from sitting around checking in with my intuition all those years (and preaching the truth left and right as I was deciding I was getting it). And one of the major things I learned during Pluto’s trek through Sagittarius is that doing spiritual work isn’t getting me anywhere if I’m not also doing soul work.
In depth psychologist and ecotherapist Bill Plotkin’s terminology, the former is ascension. While it has its place in our lives and journeys, integral to wholeness is also engaging in descension. I see we’re getting here and there better at ascension, for which we have some examples in our culture, but we don’t have acceptable, sanctioned models for descension, and so people don’t always know how to deal with that. I recommend Plotkin’s work to get a handle on this stuff - it’s conscious of how people and the world really are, and in it he suggests and explains numerous doorways to undertake the journey to gain consciousness of your most inner workings and, as I understand it, make friends with and reintegrate anything hiding down there that we’re afraid to look at. It’s a smorgasbord of shadow work.
Hence, a ladder down to hell.
Coincidence that I’m doing this waxing Pluto square thing?
Of course not. Why, I’m this week spending time with some monsters that’ve been under my psycho-emotio-spiritual bed. Probably I won’t report the encounters in detail, but suffice it to say that I’m learning just tons about stuff I think, feel and do that I’ve never been able to see before. And, of course, I’m happy to report that the reality is never as bad as you think - as bad as the fear of it. But something I got today when writing an e-mail to someone is this: One of the fears about coming to work with Pluto energy consciously at the waxing square is that in each of us, there’s a part that’s afraid to become the agent of change we so desperately want to become.*
*Pluto in evolutionary astrology, depending on whom you ask, represents the soul’s deepest desires/intentions or the soul’s deepest wounding. I work with it as representing both: To get to the desire and become that agent of change, we have to heal the layers of pain that inform our fear of living our lives in the ways we truly desire.
Tom is available for soul-centered consultations. See http://tdjacobs.com for more information.
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January 25, 2008 By Tom Jacobs