Don't Push Me Around!

Planets don’t make you do anything – but they can help you discern your Soul’s purpose

A growing number of people in the world are doing their best to live their lives in a creative, instead of a reactive, manner. They understand that Consciousness is the creator of physical reality, and that as we become more conscious of how our thoughts, beliefs and feelings create our personal and collective experience, we can and do change our lives and our world from the inside out.

Frequently, people like this will say something like “I’m not going to let any planet push me around!” when the subject turns to astrology. It’s a healthy reaction to any attempt at external manipulation, but it also reflects a misunderstanding of how astrology works.

Usually, people who tend to think about things like reality creation have thought deeply about the nature of existence, and more often than not, come to the conclusion that there is an underlying unity to the Consciousness that creates our reality. Each of us is, of course, a creative part of that unity, which weaves and re-weaves itself in the shifting pattern of All That Is, a totality that the Taoists refer to simply as the Tao.

Given this, it follows that the reality we have been birthed into is a mass creation of all the aspects of that greater Consciousness that participate in our version of reality. Our Universe is an exquisite weaving of patterns of energy and mass agreements of consciousness that give us time, space, and the ground of the physical world for our individual creations.

The process of birthing ourselves into this world is a sacred one, fraught with meaning, as we “jump off the cloud” and intentionally intertwine with the patterns of the physical world. We focus our consciousness, and come in to join the dance. We are marked as an individual by that passage, and the time and place we choose to be born proclaims our individuality. We can and do grow and change, but until the moment of death, we carry with us the patterns and energy of the world as it was at our birth.

We are born, and time passes. The sun rises and sets, seasons change in their ongoing spiral, weather sweeps across the land, and the Earth and stars and planets move in their mysterious dance.  In this vast sweep of reality our Soul has found our particular niche—a body, a set of parents, a place and time into which we are born.

From our Soul’s vantage point outside of the space-time continuum, it can see the patterns as they shift and unfold after our birth, and our Soul knows that a lifetime “there and then” will allow for certain lessons and experiences in the same way that the coming of the Sun’s warmth and the Spring rains allow us to plant crops that would fail if we planted them in Winter.

The unfolding patterns, as they radiate out from our birth, speak to us of our Soul’s thoughts and choices. But our specific, individual consciousness, housed in one body in one lifetime, chooses how we interact with those unfolding patterns. We can choose to plant a crop, to play in the mud, to dance in the rain, or to go sit inside by a warm fire until the Sun comes out again. What we can’t do is stop the changing patterns of weather that define the spiraling seasons.

As we grow and progress through our lives, we interact with the world naturally and spontaneously, shifting and creating patterns in concert with the myriad other consciousnesses that make up our world. Our bodies grow and mature, and our genetic code is modified by our environment.  None of this is dis-empowering, or denies our creativity. It is simply the canvas for our painting, the instruments we choose to play our music, the stage on which we dance.

Because of the underlying unity of the Tao, we are connected with all the parts and patterns of the universe in a unique way. The larger, cosmic patterns, like the weather, are an unmistakable influence on our lives, but the weather does not make choices for us. Understanding those cosmic patterns gives us insight into the energetic “weather” we can expect in our lives, and also into what creative lessons and opportunities for growth are coming into focus. We know whether to go out and plant seeds, or to sit in front of the fire dreaming for a bit while the snow falls.

There is nothing fatalistic or deterministic about astrological forecasting -- which looks at the larger patterns, or weather, of our lives – anymore than it is fatalistic to not plant corn in December in Nebraska.  Our soul chose our time and place of birth knowing full well the cosmic cycles we would encounter, and what those cycles would give us an opportunity to create. We are free to choose how we move within those parameters, and free to resist, as well; to plant corn in Winter.

But surrendering to our Soul’s purpose invariably opens more doors for us than resistance, and, paradoxically, gives us more freedom and choice. If we learn to dance with the planets, they will never push us around.