Ecstatic Astrologers and the Celestial Language

The concepts of a personal God, and of an impersonal super-cosmic or intra-cosmic Absolute, represent two ways of solving the problem of the meaning of existence. The former makes astrology quite superfluous, for the solution of all existential problems is “union with God” — or at least the ability to hold a “dialogue” with God, the absolute and never-failing Guide and Comforter. If, however, the universe is understood to exist through the cyclic interplay of cosmic Principles and of an “infinite Ocean of energy” astrology can be considered as a “celestial Language”.

Dane Rudhyar, “The Spiritual Value of Astrology“

I have to admit that, in all my forty-seven years — despite growing up in the Presbyterian Church the son of a preacher — I’ve not been able to wrap my head around the notion of a personal God.

Now, a personal representative of God — that has made more sense to me.

As has the idea of “union” with That… although it’s hard to say that my experience of That is what they (the various scripture writers down through the ages) were referring to when they uttered a name for God.

From my perspective, a universally-acceptable definition of God remains out of reach — as does the absolute certainty that there exists such a Being as God, regardless of the definition.

I mean, does the samadhi of deep meditation equal God?

If I pray intensely and am overwhelmed “by the Spirit,” does this experience prove the existence of God… or does it prove the existence of ecstatic phenomena, without reference to an Ultimate Being?

Perhaps this is the reason why the Buddha left open the question of God, preferring instead to lay out a Path that would eliminate the need for conjecture.

Leaving aside the absolutist assertions of various revealed scriptures that have come down to us, let us suspend our arguments for and against the notion of God, and agree to entertain the idea that individual human beings — beings with a separate consciousness and identity from the Infinite — are incapable of truly “knowing” the Infinite… but that, within our limited range of possible understanding, there may be inspiring clues as to how our world may look from the perspective of God.

There is something of this in what Rudhyar was getting at in his quote.

He was not exactly denying that God could exist in a personal form, or that we humans may “lose ourselves” in this God through a type of spiritual union. In pointing toward a “Celestial Language,” however, he invited us to avail ourselves of an expression of Intelligence that may be decoded through a study of the relationship between our geocentric perspective and the heavens above.

If, indeed, humans were “created in the image” of the Elohim, it stands to reason that there is some correlation between the skies above (representing the outside-looking-in point-of-view of a God with omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence) and the Earth below, along with its human inhabitants.

Most practicing astrologers would say that there is more than “some correlation,” but that a solid astrological understanding equals a profound opportunity to observe human life through the very eyes of the Celestial God.

* * *

For the record, I have a belief in a Unified Intelligence that “communicates” through many Mysteries… most of which remain encumbered in a morass of disinformation, power games, ignorance and confusion.

I believe that astrology is a valid “decoding machine” for the Mysteries, although a given interpretation is susceptible to fallible human bias.  If such bias is an unavoidable consequence of human life, then the question arises:  what sort of astrologer offers a bias most aligned with the Source of Celestial Language?

If a given astrologer comes predominantly from an intellectual/technical life-experience, with no direct (i.e., “ecstatic”) absorption in the all-pervading Divine, then this person’s consultation will offer all sorts of bells and whistles dug from a well-read bag o’ astrological tricks. I believe there is value in receiving a reading from such a technician, in that the client benefits from the combined portfolio of every astrologer to whom our technician has ever been exposed.  There is good and interesting information here… minus a “living bridge” that vivifies the consultation through the astrologer’s experience of spiritual union.

In modern times — thank goodness — many astrologers maintain daily spiritual practices, some of which are bound to produce ecstatic fruit.

Maurice Fernandez, for instance, is a certified kundalini yoga teacher (in the Yogi Bhajan lineage). I have personally attended some of his kundalini yoga sessions, and am willing to testify to the effectiveness of this practice in giving rise to charismatic phenomena. The “third-eye focus” that is so strongly emphasized during a kundalini yoga session brings an assortment of ecstacies, especially with all the intense “fire breathing” and other techniques that pepper a given yoga set.

A reading from Maurice is naturally informed by his spiritual practice, thus offering a living quality to the Mysteries that speak through the Celestial Language of astrology.

I believe, also, that my own experience as an ecstatic contemplative brings a profound connection with astrological information in a way that no book or lecturer could ever provide.

I say this not to toot my own horn, but to strongly hint that the counseling device of astrology — which purports to give insight (at the very least) into universal laws that are God-like in perspective — is nothing but rote recital when devoid of a unitive spiritual practice.

You want your astrologer, in other words, to be able to combine solid astrological understanding with a rigorous practice that brings spiritual authority to the expressions of Celestial Language.

You want to get yourself an astrologer who not only understands the Celestial Language, but who speaks it through the filter of daily “union with God” — beyond the need for conjecture.

Sling-Shot Into the Multiverse

From the most recent Winter Solstice (December 21, 2009) until upcoming March 9, we all will have been experiencing Mars retrograde in Leo.

A retrograde movement is an optical illusion that makes a planet appear to journey backward in its orbit, and it has the effect of internalizing much of the planet’s influence. Rather than manifesting directly into our immediate environment, there is a sense of requisite preparation that may entail all sorts of cleansing and letting go.

You are not alone if, throughout this period, you’ve felt charged-up and ready to go… even while being held back, like a stallion chomping at the bit. It would also not be surprising if you’ve been asked to separate from important relationships, jobs and other once-solid commitments.

This has been a time of incredible inner churning — fiery intensity, dominated by a sense that the world is moving at break-neck speed and we are somehow falling behind — shouldn’t we be doing something to address the situation?

Frustration results, as our conditioning prompts self-judgment around an inability to take a step forward. We feel as though we are moving sideways, at best, even when it looks like we’re taking care of business “out there.”

The skillful way to be with this transit — no matter how it impacts an individual natal chart — is to relax, allowing the fire of Mars and Leo to cleanse away hindrances to what will unfold when the retrograde movement ends on March 9.

* * *

When we look ahead to early March, we notice a stellium (or grouping) of planets in Pisces: Uranus, Sun, Mercury and Jupiter.

Pisces, the Mystic, transcends conventional boundaries of consciousness. With these planets moving through Pisces at precisely the time that Mars goes direct at 0″17′ Leo, we will not only begin to move out of our insulated comfort zones, but we will be blasted beyond the margins of our conditioned reality. With so much emphasis on Pisces, we will collectively sense our individual participation in a much, much larger cycle of transformation — and we will secretly desire that our lives will shift into alignment with our “true mission.”

I really do see the period between March 9 and June 7 (when Mars moves from Leo into Virgo, with Chiron having dipped into Pisces to join Uranus and Jupiter) as a challenge that demands deep and unconditional surrender within each and every one of us. We will be asked to trust in ways that we’ve successfully avoided in the past, no matter how deep our fear of being “burned” again. We will also be asked to assume a larger perspective within ourselves, connecting with something higher and more powerful.

We will, in fact, be prompted to allow this larger part of us to run the show.

The hours, days and weeks from March 9 to June 7 signify a collective acceleration of consciousness, which will find grounding once Mars has finally entered the earth sign of Virgo. During this acceleration, potential changes that have been incubating since the Solstice will blossom into manifestation — likely more than one, flying toward us like blowing embers — such that we may not be able to collate and organize things in real time, requiring that we (again) trust that everything is falling into place according to some higher design… knowing that a time for assessment will arrive with Summer.

So, good friends, just know that this strange inner chaos that seeps outward from time to time — the jerking forward and back, feet stepping on themselves — is actually part of a necessary adjustment that has been moving through us all. Our wish for resolution will not only be met, but will be met in ways that we’ve not even dreamed of.

Ours is to remain patient during these final days of inner preparation, and to buckle-in for a three-month trans-dimensional journey into uncharted space… knowing that there’ll be time enough to make sense of it all in due time.

Those who consciously embrace the shift will be the first to realize that the awaiting reality is perfect and fine in every way….

Signs and Symbols: A Doorway to the Holy Place

The question is, why consult signs and symbols when we are modern citizens of the Scientific Age?

What possible benefit could come from an examination of planetary positions at the moment and place of birth?

Did we not leave such superstitious ideas behind when Darwin and Descartes came along?

Granted, Carl G. Jung did much to restore interest in alchemy, astrology, Eastern traditions and the realm of the intuitive. He studied dreams in himself and thousands of clients over the years, and even sent his most challenging clients off to have a horoscope drawn up. He recognized through his theory of synchronicity that there is no such thing as randomness, that everything in this reality unfolds along archetypal lines, and that this unfoldment occurs according to alchemical cycles that appear to have been embedded in the collective unconscious of humanity. Jung was not afraid to look into the dark past for insights into psychological pathologies of modern existence – and what he found during this search was that the ancients were far better equipped to understand the workings of the mind and soul than are scientifically-conditioned “experts” of current times.

Jung paid a price for his rediscoveries, of course, in that his work was marginalized and discarded by the psychotherapeutic establishment, which retains a Freudian perspective to this very day.  So-called “Jungians” are typically regarded by the mainstream with a wink and a nod, at best.  Nevertheless, Jungian ideas have infiltrated the field of psychology in subtle (yet profound) ways, even as these ideas have done wonders in establishing astrology in the West.

Dane Rudhyar, whose work spanned the middle 50 years of the 20^th century, crystallized Jung’s revolutionary perspective and combined it with the ancient art of astrology, publishing in 1936 one of the truly original – if nearly-unknown – works of psycho-spiritual synthesis ever produced: The Astrology of Personality. In this book (as well as in most of his writings), Rudhyar showed that astrology is not about predicting future events, but about bringing order out of chaos, giving the individual a roadmap for psychological unfoldment along organic and cyclical lines.

In my consultations, then, it is this ideal of “bringing order out of chaos” that informs the proceedings.

Through this “higher ordering,” something profound and mysterious occurs, and it is this deeper process that gives astrology its true value.

We spend so much of our lives “in the middle of it,” plugging away, often just surviving what seems like a random mess of external influences that push us here and there. We are conditioned, in fact, to believe that this is how life really occurs – that things just happen, and we should respond as best we can. The idea that life unfolds in cycles that may be interpreted through signs and symbols is not something to be taken seriously – so we just push ahead, doing what we can within our limited range of vision.

If nothing else, these past 18 years of working with astrology have shown me that life is not random, that it does unfold according to a collective framework that manifests cyclically, and that these cycles have been expressed through the signs and symbols of astrology for thousands of years.

Astrology puts the individual in touch with the collective, the micro with the macro, and it gives us the opportunity to avail ourselves of a collective perspective that is literally infinite in scope. It is like being put in a spaceship, flown way, way up into our local solar system – into the realm of the Archetypes – and given the opportunity to see life from the point-of-view of higher understanding. From this higher platform of knowledge, order is introduced into what the individual experiences as chaos.

While it’s true that, in identifying certain cycles running through the client’s chart, an occasional insight will arise that may be taken as a “prediction” for future events… what is actually happening is that the client and I are arriving at a synchronistic point of understanding. Together we “see” something clear and obvious, even though it may have been sitting on the client’s nose for years and years. This is an alchemical process, such that, when the two of us climb into the “alchemical crucible,” we have availed ourselves of a Mystery that expresses through signs and symbols. We have immersed ourselves, in fact, in a sea of signs and symbols, submitting to anciently-derived collective wisdom that comes to bear on the present moment.

As I explain this and describe that during a routine survey of astrological data springing forth from the chart, signs and symbols are transmuted into insights that trigger connections and associations within the client. These connections and associations then trigger a similar process within me. In short order, the client and I are seeing one another as an uncanny mirror, sharing in this deeply intimate moment a recognition of an otherwise unconscious human heritage.

There is something profoundly healing in the intimacy of this meeting, beyond even what the signs and symbols represent. It is as though the signs and symbols create a doorway to the holy place of awareness before we take birth, and in this holy place we find a spiritual connectedness that is independent of the form and drama of our current life. We have agreed to spend an hour or so in this place, suspending our conditioning and our beliefs about the should’s and shouldn’ts of life… and we make ourselves available to a wisdom that can’t be accessed in any other way.

Perhaps this description sounds forth as memory and resonance from beyond the chaos of your everyday life.

If so, perhaps the alchemical crucible may be calling you.

Names of God, Take Two

I thought I’d elevate (unedited) to the front page a comment by our good friend Gariban, who contributes to the world’s spiritual understanding by translating Sufi writings into his native Turkish language.  This man knows about the names of God.

My Dear friends thanks for opening a conversation about the names of God, 99 Names of God were explained clearly in the Qur’an by God and authentical sayings of prophet Muhammad(PBUH). There are books of information about these names clearly stating the names, name-adjectives and adjectives of God and how they are manifesting in the universe and on us. One of the most beatiful and comprehensive book in this area was prepared by Shaikh Tosun Bayrak Al-Jerrahi in Newyork. The name of the book is called “The name and the named”. You can obtain one from amazon I think.

My dear friends, Let me share my opinion with you by commenting on a verse from bible in this case:

“If a man has 100 sheep, but one of the sheep becomes lost, then the man will leave the other 99 sheep on the hill. He will go to look for the lost sheep. Right? And if the man finds the lost sheep, the man is happier about that one sheep than about the 99 sheep that were never lost. I tell you the truth. In the same way, your Father in heaven does not want any of these little children to be lost.” Matthew 18:12-14 (ERV)

Who are these 99 sheeps?
I will humbly try to explain what I understand from this verse with my poor knowledge in islam. In islam 99 names of ALLAH is known. ALLAH is a unique name and it is not equivalent to the name “God”. Equivalent of God in islam is “Ilah” or with the terms of Jesus in aramaic”Alahi”. Explaining the difference between the word “GOD or ilah in arabic” and “ALLAH” is another matter, long to explain here. Debates about this difference are turned in to battle due to illiteracy in knowledge.

Those 99 names what we call “Asma ul Husna” are the sheeps which are bound to the One. They all come from the One.

These 99 names manifest within the universe. But manifests with all names as “ALLAH” on the perfect man only. The word manifestation is a dangerous word and used wrongly in Christian literature. It is perceived as entering in to something and many Christians think that God manifested in flesh as Jesus. So they come up with crazy statements saying Jesus is God and fall in blasphemy. The person who coloured with the names of God and acts with the qualities of these names are not GOD. They are the people who beat their ego and become pure servants to GOD. They are neither joined to GOD nor separate from HIM. They are prophets or Insan-Al-Kamils(perfect human being, saints etc. although there are differences between the titles on saints in Sufism). Name “ALLAH” brings all the names together and combines them in to ONE. So When a person says ALLAH, he says all 99 names without knowing. ALLAH lended a bit of his names to human being . So in the seed of every human being, there are his names and adjectives in different combinations as potential!…

” And He taught Adam all the names, then showed them to the angels, saying: Inform Me of the names of these, if ye are truthful.” Al-Bakara 2/31.

“Say: “Call upon Allah, or call upon Rahman: by whatever name ye call upon Him, (it is well): for to Him belong the Most Beautiful Names…..” Al-Isra 17/110

See a list of names in the following link”http://www.islamicedfoundation.com/99names/99names.htm”

Human does not own these names, they are his 99 sheeps given to him for a period of time. Human can not be named with all of these names either. For instance “Ar-Rahman:compassionate one” is a special name of ALLAH and can not be used by a human being. Human has to use these names by acting in accordance with the laws of God. If he behaves according to the names, then he is coloured with this name. He needs to milk these sheeps to drink from their milk. But he needs to tackle the wolf(his ego, Nafs-I amara, evil commanding self) first as he is constantly attacking to him.

These 99 names are like the elements within the periodic table. They work in mysterious combinations and make alloys and composites. Sometimes these composites define other names. That is why the complete list of names are known only by ALLAH. This prayer said by prophet Muhammad sheds light on this issue:

(O Allah, I am Your slave, son of Your slave, son of Your maidservant; my forelock is in Your hand, Your command over me is forever executed and Your decree over me is just. I ask You by every name belonging to You which You have named Yourself with, or revealed in Your Book, or You taught to any of Your creation, or You have preserved in the knowledge of the Unseen with You, that You make the Qur’an the life of my heart and the light of my breast, and a departure for my sorrow and a release for my anxiety)

To benefit from the name “Al-Wahhab: The giver who gives without expecting any benefit for it”, he spends from what he has for the others without expecting anything from them. If he does this, he activates this potential name within him. He gets the benefit of that milk. If he shows mercy to God’s creation, he gets the milk from the adjective “Ar-Raheem: the merciful”. The person gets closer to God by getting the taste of these milks and being coloured with the colours of these sheeps.

“Abu Huraira reported that the Messenger of Allah, said, “Allah has ninety-nite names. He who ‘ahsaha’ [enumerates them, believes in them, ponders their meanings, worships Allah by them and supplicates with them, and acts by them according to one’s belief in them] will enter Paradise. He is God other than whom there is no god, the Compassionate, the Merciful, the King, the Holy, the Source of Peace, the Preserver of Security…” The hadith continues to list ninety-nine names of Allah. ”

Abu Huraira reported that the Messenger of Allah said, “Allah has ninety-nine names, one hundred less one. Whoever ‘ahsaha’ will enter Paradise. (Recorded by al-Bukhari and Muslim).

Who is the lost sheep that man was looking for?
Well , I guess When we first recognise that 99, we will find 100th inshaallah(with God’s willing)!…

AND ALLAH KNOWS BEST…

With peace and love
Gariban

Thanks once again, Gariban, for bringing your knowledge and wisdom to this blog.  Your friendship is more valuable than you know…..

Sunday Rumi

Sweet sounds imbued with Spirit:

May your day of rest be peaceful and full of joy….

Of Pinecones In the Brain

This may not be to eveyone’s taste, but David Wilcock‘s discussion of the pineal gland and its relationship with ongoing collective transformation strikes me as riveting.

This is mind candy of the highest order….

Kundalini Awakening

A reason for living….

Rudhyar on Personhood, Schuon on the Underlying Unity

Dane Rudhyar filtered astrology through Jung’s archetypal and alchemical psychology, emerging with a vision of wholeness that’s never found a more effective expression.

From his final book, The Fullness of Human Experience:

What is to be meant by being a person? Why are human beings today determined to operate as autonomous individuals characteristically able to make responsible decisions? Another question inevitably follows: How does a person arrive at what he or she considers a valid basis for the decision? This basis evidently depends on the particular nature of the choice being made; yet, whether or not the person realizes it, any decision implies the acceptance of an approach to life and the meaning of existence which has metaphysical and/or religious roots.

Most religions or spiritual philosophies assume as an incontrovertible fact of inner experiences (particularly in states of intense meditation or ecstasy) that human persons are essentially spiritual entities (Souls or Monads) that, having emerged from “the One” (God or the Absolute), return to their source after a long and dangerous “pilgrimage” through a series of material states. Individuality, and therefore a state of at least relative separateness which allows for basic differences in beingness, are the essential factors in the human condition.

I would add that it is this “state of at least relative separateness” that is at the root of our 21st Century existential crisis — which is why a revival of Religio Perennis is essential to both the survival and wellbeing of the human species on planet Earth.

Why?

Because, without a metaphysical structure, we are left without a context through which this material reality may gain meaning. And without meaning, what’s the point in living?

It is this dirth of meaning that ends up pitting humans against humans, each projecting suffering onto the other, mindless of their essential unity.

On the other hand, with metaphysical meaning comes a recognition of our brotherhood and sisterhood — our collective status as children of The One — and it is this recognition that invites heaven on earth.

From Frithjof Schuon’s definition (.pdf) of Religio Perennis:

One of the keys to understanding our true nature and our ultimate destiny is the fact that the things of this world are never proportionate to the actual range of our intelligence. Our intelligence is made for the Absolute, or else it is nothing; among all the intelligences of this world the human spirit alone is capable of objectivity, and this implies—or proves—that the Absolute alone confers on our intelligence the power to accomplish to the full what it can accomplish and to be wholly what it is. If it were necessary or useful to prove the Absolute, the objective and trans-personal character of the human Intellect would be a sufficient testimony, for this Intellect is the indisputable sign of a purely spiritual first Cause, a Unity infinitely central but containing all things, an Essence at once immanent and transcendent. It has been said more than once that total Truth is inscribed in an eternal script in the very substance of our spirit; what the different Revelations do is to “crystallize” and “actualize”, in different degrees according to the case, a nucleus of certitudes that not only abides forever in the divine Omniscience, but also sleeps by refraction in the “naturally supernatural” kernel of the individual, as well as in that of each ethnic or historical collectivity or the human species as a whole.

(…) The essential function of human intelligence is discernment between the Real and the illusory or between the Permanent and the impermanent, and the essential function of the will is attachment to the Permanent or the Real. This discernment and this attachment are the quintessence of all spirituality; carried to their highest level or reduced to their purest substance, they constitute the underlying universality in every great spiritual patrimony of humanity, or what may be called the religio perennis; this is the religion to which the sages adhere, one which is always and necessarily founded upon formal elements of divine institution.

(…) A civilization is integral and healthy to the extent it is founded on the “invisible” or “underlying” religion, the religio perennis, that is, to the extent its expressions or forms are transparent to the Non-Formal and tend toward the Origin, thus conveying the recollection of a Lost Paradise, but also—and with all the more reason—the presentiment of a timeless Beatitude. For the Origin is at once within us and before us; time is but a spiral movement around a motionless Center.

This last line says it all.

It is something toward which our species once aspired — our fallible, frail species — and with any luck, it’s an aspiration we’ll discover once again.

Soon, before it’s too late.

In a Nutshell

For anyone who thinks that Buddhism is a dry, stoic path, it’s good to read (with a discriminating and open heart) the voluminous Discourses of the Buddha to find that bliss, joy and ecstasy were at the very root of his teachings.

An example would be Verse 372 from the Dhammapada, here translated by my meditation teacher, Jeffrey S. Brooks:

There is no ecstasy without wisdom,

There is no wisdom without ecstasy.

Whoever is close to enlightenment

truly has both wisdom and ecstasy.

There’s lots more where this came from, if you’ve got the time and commitment to delve into it.

As controversial as this sounds, I’ll say in anyway: If your meditations and waking life are not saturated in bliss, joy and ecstasy, you need a new teacher… before you waste another minute on the cushion.

The transformative power of meditative absorption (which produces perpetual bliss, joy and ecstasy) leads to wisdom, as the Buddha shows over and over and over again.

It may take a lifetime or two, but really, is there something more worth our time and energy than the acquisition of ecstasy and wisdom?

 

A Sufi Story for a Sunny Sunday in Boulder

From Shaikh Nazim at SufiSpot:

One day a young man was standing in the middle of the town proclaiming that he had the most beautiful heart in the whole valley.

A large crowd gathered and they all admired his heart for it was perfect.

There was not a mark or a flaw in it.

Yes, they all agreed it truly was the most beautiful heart they had ever seen.

The young man was very proud and boasted more loudly about his beautiful heart. Suddenly, an old man appeared at the front of the crowd and said, “Why your heart is not nearly as beautiful as mine.”

The crowd and the young man looked at the old man’s heart. It was beating strongly … but full of scars. It had places where pieces had been removed and other pieces put in … but they didn’t fit quite right and there were several jagged edges.

In fact, in some places there were deep gouges where whole pieces were missing. The people starred … how could he say his heart is more beautiful, they thought?

The young man looked at the old man’s heart and saw its state and laughed. “You must be joking,” he said. “Compare your heart with mine … mine is perfect and yours is a mess of scars and tears.”

“Yes!” said the old man, “Yours is perfect looking … but I would never trade with you. You see, every scar represents a person to whom I have given my love. I tear out a piece of my heart and give it to them … and often they give me a piece of their heart which fits into the empty place in my heart … but because the pieces aren’t exact, I have some rough edges, which I cherish, because they remind me of the love we shared. Sometimes I have given pieces of my heart away … and the other person hasn’t returned a piece of his heart to me. These are the empty gouges … giving love is taking a chance. Although these gouges are painful, they stay open, reminding me of the love I have for these people too … and I hope someday they may return and fill the space I have waiting.”

“So now do you see what true beauty is?”, said the old man.

The young man stood silently with tears running down his cheeks. He walked up to the old man, reached into his perfect young and beautiful heart, and ripped a piece out. He offered it to the old man with trembling hands.

The old man took his offering, placed it in his heart and then took a piece from his old scarred heart and placed it in the wound in the young man’s heart.

It fits but not perfectly, as there were some jagged edges.

The young man looked at his heart, not perfect anymore but more beautiful than ever, since love from the old man’s heart flowed into his.

Let’s hear it for tattered old hearts, well-used and freely-given.

Have a wonderful week, everyone.

UPDATE:  In comments, Bilal from SufiSpot informs us that Shaikh Nazim is not the actual author of this story.  Bilal says, “This story has been inspired by Shaikh Nazim’s teachings, however, this was written by one of his students.”

Thanks to Shaikh Nazim’s student, then, for coming up with this story!