Stuck: it's the new trend
LATELY I HAVE been hearing a lot of the word stuck. This feels positively strange to say, but there seems to be a trend of admitting you're not going anywhere in life, or like you feel like you're not going anywhere. Every other email I get from a reader is about how stuck they feel. I guess all these years of voting Republican and having lattes for lunch are finally starting to catch up with us.
This is not the ever-popular "Bugger off, I'm proud to be stuck" energy; it is not the eminently distinguished "Who, me? Stuck?" posture, either. This is, "Wow, I'm like really stuck. I want to be an artist, but the only thing I've used a pencil for in the past six years is to scratch inside my ear. I've had these paints in my closet since 1998, and the lids are stuck. Even the gas cap on my Ford Explorer is stuck. I hate my job and my bed feels like fly paper."
Eclipses, which are coming soon, tend to move stuck energy, stuck people and stuck things. That is to say, they move it (that is, us) whether we like it or not, and it's actually possible to have a lot of fun during this time of acceleration and adventure.One of the properties of Aquarius is the fixation of patterns. Every sign has its ups and downs, and each person born under a particular sign borrows a diversity of those properties (never really all of them). Aquarius is extremely good at establishing mental patterns.
We know that the way to play the game in the Age of Aquarius is to establish a pattern and let it take on a life of its own. That pattern becomes a thing that's easy, even necessary, to get trapped in. We can even do this consciously; we teach ourselves a routine and typically find it very difficult to function without it. Patterns take on lives of their own, and they tend to live us as much as we live them. They nearly all involve technology, relationships or both. A couple may get into a pattern of relating, or sex, and it seems impossible to change; or a person may get into a pattern of being alone. And it can seem a huge deal to change that energy imprint; it can seem like nothing else is possible (but then of course it is).
Yet even strong fixed-sign people are getting sick of the patterns that have ruled their lives for so long: along with a lot of other people who are fairly well sick of the emotional distance, the insane rush and the lack of contact with one's core values that have been taking over the world.
The point I am making in a roundabout (fishy) way here is that being stuck is a necessary part of the lives we live, in the age we are living; and part of that game involves jumping the tracks and getting unstuck long enough to make some changes and initiate a new pattern; and then this proceeds till the next time. Has anyone noticed this?
Then come eclipses. Eclipses represent phases of time and specific events wherein we get to shift continuity and establish new patterns. Their ability to help us do both is about equal; we can be directly taken out of long-established patterns (this is usually passive, unconscious mode); we can lay down the grid and create a new method, approach, attitude or mode of existence (this is usually active, conscious mode).The oncoming ones happen to be in fixed signs. The solar eclipse of Aug. 1 is in Leo. In the first astrology book written in English (called Christian Astrology, published in 1647), William Lilly writes that when an eclipse of the Sun occurs in Leo, if it was rainy for a long time, there shall be a drought, and if it was dry, it will rain a lot. The prior fixed pattern will exchange itself for a new fixed pattern.
Let's look at the human dimension, with a little help from the ideas of the Tibetan speaking through Alice A. Bailey in Esoteric Astrology. The Leo-Aquarius axis involves the way in which individuals relate to groups, which is one of the most important contact points of any social creature or any society. Leo is the sign of personal expression, which can represent itself as egotism on one end of the spectrum or as true individuality on the other.
Aquarius is the sign of collective expression, which can express itself as a kind of cultural fascism at one end of the spectrum or as freedom for individuals to both express themselves as such, and to freely relate in groups, on the other end. The structure is parallel. In a world where Leo is expressed egotistically, a culture will tend toward locked-in patterns and express mass consciousness (to wit, Nazi Germany). Where a culture allows individuals to be themselves, the social pattern will be more liberal, and the culture will tend toward group consciousness (quick, somebody name a place).It is difficult for most people to tell the difference between the two parallel worlds, yet the difference makes all the difference in the universe. The purposes underlying the two sides of the equation are entirely at odds; the agendas are opposite. Currently, our society is attempting a long, painful transition from one to the other. Individuals who are undergoing the psychological process are moving from egotism to individuality. As this occurs, society will gradually shift from mass consciousness to group consciousness. The shift is extremely disorienting for many people, particularly where family relations are concerned.
We forget that the first group is the family, which is a version of the tribe -- a distinctly Aquarian entity. The family is particularly brutal about allowing individuals to be themselves. All of psychology, psychiatry, therapy, astrology and humanistic process work are basically devoted to undoing the damage of the family and encouraging individuals to freely be themselves. For example, in the majority of my astrological sessions, I work with people whose ability to express themselves was hampered or damaged by what they were told by their parents. And in the process, their (that is, our) sense of self or right to exist as an individual free to make choices was damaged or disconnected from its power source.
In the current sequence of eclipses, we experience a total solar event in Leo first, suggesting that the place to start is with oneself. What stories do you tell yourself about who you are? What do you want to believe about who you are? If you are stuck, do you recognize the extent to which this is on the level of ideas, i.e., in true fixed-sign form, "in your head"? If so, what is your model of your own psyche? How do you believe you make real changes, and do you even believe you can? Activity in Leo is encouraging you to go from being unconscious or self-conscious to fully self-aware and self-reflective.
