HOW to Trust the Universe
Image credit: Jill Allyn Peterson, 2024
My car was stolen a few weeks ago, but it wasn't just a car. It was a 3-month-old Toyota Land Cruiser. And it wasn't just a fancy throwback revival SUV that made me feel special (which it did). It was the first big proof in my life that sigil magic is real . And it also wasn't just an amazing "manifestation" win (though it was). Driving it felt like an integration of my masculine and feminine energies into a perfect all-terrain expression of rugged care (my mars in cancer wants to crawl over rocks in comfort and style). This car mattered to me in multi-dimensions.
When I decided I wanted to bring this glorious chunk of the material world into my life, I didn't have the right amount of money to do so (at all), but I didn't let that stop me from energetically inviting it toward me. I can't say “I knew the money would arrive”, but I knew that if it did arrive, it wouldn't be because I created a realistic budget or a practical plan for it. It would be because there was no interference with the pure desire I had for it. No “will they love me now?” energy. Just “I see you, I see me in you.”
So why, then, was it taken from me, my cosmically-destined dream car? It was an oddly detached feeling I had when I walked out into that frozen Montreal night to see an empty parking space where my baby had been just 2 hours prior. It was very similar to when I found out I had a spinal cord tumor (about 18 years prior). My immediate feeling was:
Huh! That's weird - bad things don't normally happen to me.
With a sort of “ok then, what's next?" energy (sprinkled with intermittent eruptions of WTF!), I dealt with the situation at hand on the micro level. I guess I have to call the police?
Then when there was nothing left to do but wait, I'd focus on the macro: What is this experience here to teach me--to more deeply value my vast privilege compared to a large swath of the planet? To more selectively trust the universe so I'm not left high and dry? That magic is real, don't take it for granted? My fiancé eventually grew tired of this, saying “Sometimes shit just happens.”
This is my astrology, though. I've got lots of earth, and a planet or asteroid between 16-19 degrees of every sign. So every transiting square (challenging) aspect in one part of my chart is also a trine (helpful) to another. I'm not sure I've had a bad experience that didn't make me look for, and eventually feel grateful for, its lessons.
In the case of my stolen car, it happened on the new moon in Pisces (my 3rd house of short distance travel) which was on my South Node (letting go), square (challenging) my natal asteroid Phaethon (cars and overconfidence - thank you Cal Garrison for alerting me to it). Sort of like, yeah, this is just what happens now.
But transiting Phaethon was also trine (helpful) my natal Jupiter (expansion) at that exact moment. And wouldn't you know it, I just found out that my insurance payout is going to be more than what I originally paid for the car, and the notary who helped me submit my claim paperwork didn't charge for her services, saying “you've been through enough." *Tinkerbell twinkle sound*
In other words, when life astrologically gives me lemons, they seem to also come with a juicer and some sugar. I still have to do the work, but I've got what I need to make something out of it. I feel bad even saying that, because not everyone has the kind of astrology that sets you up with “bad things don't happen to me” baseline expectations.
Which begs the question, if you don't have such humblebraggy astrology, how is my little story helpful?
Instead of telling you to “just trust the universe” (this is a no-platitudes zone, after all) let me give you a more actionable takeaway from my stolen-car-fiasco: when life gives you lemons, trust in the micro, trust in the macro and leave the mid-cro alone.
What do I mean by mid-cro? Well I just invented the term so I'll tell you what it means.
Mid-cro is the no-man's land between micro and macro. Mid-cro consists of thought patterns that masquerade as “grown-up” concerns, but in actuality are just open-ended anxiety spirals on the one hand, or a smug state of denial on the other.
Mid-cro is the happy place for your inner taskmaster who traffics in worst-case-scenario ideation under the banner of protecting you.
In my aforementioned personal crises, this showed up as "what if I'm in a wheelchair for the rest of my life because I can't find the right spinal cord surgeon?" or "what if I just gave away my life savings to the Montreal mob because I was too naive about key-fob-boosting and too trusting to get The Club?"
Mid-cro is also the happy place for your inner false prophet, who traffics in sophistries under the banner of "everything is under control".
This can look like:
therapy-speak - endlessly describing how trauma functions rather than integrating traumatic experiences
spiritual bypassing - saying “everything happens for a reason” instead of feeling what is actually happening right now
political outsourcing - voting “blue no matter who” without requiring the who to actually do anything remotely blue (same goes for red, it just doesn't rhyme)
astro-excuses - blaming Pluto or Saturn instead of being open to transformation and discipline (those planets' significations)
Mid-cro thoughts are neither truly universal nor truly specific; they are essentially your brain cosplaying like a Boss Baby, dispensing coping mechanisms that sound like “vital analysis” or “superior wisdom” but which really just protecting you from the reality you don't want to face. But fully feeling and facing fears doesn't have to be as excruciating as your brain would have you believe, particularly when you put your focus in the genuinely micro and macro places.
So, how to know if you're “going mid-cro”?
If your thoughts aren't helping you to take action or to give your actions the appropriate weight, you are probably going mid-cro, which has more to do with trying to control reality than actually experiencing reality itself.
Going mid-cro puts your agency in the theoretical space that is somewhere over the rainbow, alienated from the moment, instead of helping you engage with temporal experience embodied by the rainbow itself. The rainbow which is musically embodied in the octave jump from “some” to “where” in Dorothy's song (thank you Dave Hickey), which reminds us that asking “where?” can be the ultimate reframe to make realistic options more recognizable when a tornado comes along to turn life upside down.
Where am I feeling this?
Where is this moment in relation to other moments?
Where are helpful resources?
Where can I take action?
So, if you're on a journey of building trust in the universe and looking for the guidebook, I can at least give you the page I ripped out on my way into this incarnation, as I was getting spanked by a Saturn-heavy Virgo stellium (“You didn't even cry when you were born” - mom. “That's because I was being choked by the umbilical cord” - me):
When the paradigm in which you are processing difficult situations (say the ongoing horrors of life in 2025, for example) is keeping you in a mid-cro state of suspended animation that no longer feels useful or even safe…
… find a new paradigm.
As for the lesson of my cosmically-destined dream car, I’m taking this eclipse season to totally surrender to what it wants to teach me. The temptation is high to make frantic phone calls, hurry the insurance agents along and insist on some timeline that my mind already decided on.
Instead I’m relying on the kindness of family, neighbors and even strangers to get where I need to go. I’m letting a big decision that is currently dependent on my mobility, and that will substantially affect the trajectory of my home life and career, stay undecided rather than forcing what I think has to happen.
It feels a lot like surfing. Once you're out in the water, it’s literally not possible to decide when the perfect wave, or even an ok one, will roll in. But you can decide where. Where to position the board, your feet, your hands, your weight in relation to a force that seems completely indifferent to your story.
Given that the zeitgeist is vibing somewhere between tornado and tidal wave these days, I’m leaning into my own practice that helps me connect to where my energy lives in my body, the environment and the cosmos, so I can act in the micro, stay grounded in the macro and refuse to mess with Mr. In-Between.