Big Dichotomy Energy
Photo credit: Jill Allyn Peterson, 2023
I could tell you that Pluto (power, transformation) stationed direct squaring mars (war) this week. That Lilith (rejection and favoritism) is opposing Saturn (the father, time) and just had conjunctions to the moon (mothers and children) and Venus (women). That the sun (fuel) just opposed Chiron (wounding).
That all of this pertains so interestingly to the explosive events abroad that we are all agonizing over right now.
But where do we go from there?
Don't get me wrong, I think there's a lot more insight to be gleaned from looking at current events through astrology than almost any other approach. But the next question is "how does this help?"
In the fight over what's real, which characterizes our era, there's so little we can trust. For those of us who came into this life to work through trust issues, especially self-trust, these times can be challenging on a good day, decimating on a bad one. So, how to proceed?
A Failure of Nerve
I'm about to finish reading A Failure of Nerve for the second time, and it couldn't be more relevant. Written by rabbi, therapist and leadership consultant Edwin H. Friedman, the book illuminates surprising realms of emotional power that I never expected from a book whose cover is the graphic design equivalent of a Seinfeld-era, tucked-in turtleneck.
He talks about triangles, how they are a natural result of the tension that builds between two people. That all relationships become triangles among three parties, and the trick is to accept them and "remain connected" while also not getting "triangled out" - i.e. excluded to your detriment. There's a lot to unpack there, but instead of trying to explain it, I'll show you where it led me.
Photo credit: Jill Allyn Peterson, 2023
Highly emotional situations are like wetlands
When we talk about "wading in" to something, it's usually a place people don't want to go. There's a fear of becoming overwhelmed, losing yourself or losing control in these bogs of emotional turmoil. At the same time, retreating to higher, drier ground means losing touch with what matters and becoming irrelevant to the rich ecosystem you're hoping to maintain.
What's needed in this situation is a boardwalk. A path through the marsh high enough to keep you dry but low enough so you can feel the temperature of the water. It's a way to be present without "wading in".
Photo credit: Jill Allyn Peterson, 2023
Cue Tailspin
Right now we're facing a dichotomy that has almost everyone I know in a tailspin. We're being offered the limiting construct of good vs. evil again, as though playing that game one more time and expecting different results would not make us crazy, again.
With Friedman's triangles fresh in my mind, I have a new perspective on how collective anxiety is being driven through the roof. The dichotomy of good vs. evil wants us to forget ourselves, see only two options and collapse everything into one. But in reality, it's never one or two, but three:
Good-Evil-Me
Good-Evil-You
Good-Evil-Us
Good-Evil-The Company/School/Institution/Nation
Good/Evil-Friend-You
Good/Evil-Social Media Presence-You
I could keep going, but multiply the possibilities by the complexity of our personal relationships and our still-nascent globally-connected consciousness and it's clear how lost we could get trying to sort out what's real, let alone what exact percentage of it is good and where that good is located. For some reason we're supposed to know this immediately.
Photo credit: Jill Allyn Peterson, 2023
Certainty vs. Creativity
Being able to acknowledge several polarities nested within each other challenges a culture that assumes time is moving in one direction and "running out" instead of cyclical, rhythmic and divine. If nothing else, having an astrological perspective has given me room to consider multiple vantage points in the midst of a collective emotional vortex that demands a blood oath to polarity.
Personally, I feel this crisis happening on the axis of certainty vs. creativity, and for me, the compulsion is not to sacrifice one for the other but rather to examine where I am in that triangle. It's a luxury afforded by not living in a war zone, but it's a skill that won't hurt me if ever I am.
Where we grow from here
"This is how the self of any human being grows-by broadening the repertoire of its responses."
- Edwin H. Friedman from A Failure of Nerve
Finding the boardwalk through the wetlands is an alternative to the unhelpful dichotomy of either getting overwhelmed by your feelings or shutting them out completely. To stay near-but-not-in the emotional turmoil means feeling it without automatically identifying with it, even in the face of the irresistible magnetism of certainty.
There are times of personal trauma and healing that really require being in the mud, or the safety of higher ground. But when the self-appointed architects of collective-trauma-response indiscriminately demand pledges of allegiance from everyone, no matter the distance, and before the smoke has even cleared, we know we need another way.
We need a way to be with pain without being in pain.
The place between empathy and apathy—presence—is where we can access a greater repertoire of creative responses. However you find your presence, know that it is helping all of us.