May 11, 2006 | Here beside the rising tide THUNDER and rain have visited Toronto the morning of my mentorship intensive here on astrology and activism -- the perfect weather. We have a meeting room on the 10th floor, digital equipment, an Internet connection into the space, and a group of 15 astrologers and astrology students. I've gone through several variations of what to do, and I've decided I'm going to take the morning session, project one chart on the screen (the total solar eclipse of June 21, 2001), and ask people to share the story of their life since that eclipse. How intense the times we live in are entirely unacknowledged. There is so little reflection, so little assessing of the sweeping change, the pressure, the fear and most of all the sense that more is going to change faster. As Bob Dylan said in one of his lesser known songs, there's no time to think. The full-throttle astrology goes back a bit further than the 6/21/01 total solar. There was the Chiron-Pluto conjunction in Sagittarius on New Year's Eve 1999. There was the 8/11/01 total solar eclipse and grand cross ("before 9/11 there was 8/11"). So, I think that a time to reflect would be healthy and teach us a lot. Astrology on one level is about ideas; on another, it's about the positions of the planets; on another it's about these things called archetypes and our relationship to them; and if you jump up one level it's about a lot of mathematical relationships between everyone, everything, and time. But in truth astrology is an experience. It is the flow, the feeling and the events of our lives as we move through the wild cosmos, uncertain of where we are or why we are all here. We are living through dangerous days. For many people, uncertainty is a way of life; for many, fear is a way of life, and not because they want it to be. All day long we are confronted with news of war, of loss and of the threat of worse things. But life goes on, as it always does. Many people feel the potential of our moment in history, the potential for an old way of thinking and existing to be cast off and a new one to be born. The words for this are "paradigm shift." Millions of individuals in our culture have devoted long years of their lives to self-study, spiritual practice, conscious living, personal growth, therapy, meditation and living in greater harmony with the world. But a new frame of reality has yet to take over; our civilization speeds dangerously toward a cliff. We don't know, for example, how long we have before the oil runs out and before clean water will be extremely scarce everywhere, as it already is many places. I think this is an important time to assess reality, and to make decisions. As astrologers and astrology students, we have something rare, which is a cosmic perspective. We can look at longer cycles than a week or a year and explore their meaning, both collectively and in our lives. More than anything, astrology teaches us that we're intricately connected to the whole. If we acknowledge that one fact, what, then, becomes apparent? That's my proposed starting point today. I'll continue blogging on the developments of this discussion through the weekend as I can. == Note, I'll be taking the week off from Astrology Secrets Revealed and will resume next Thursday. Uncle John's Band lyrics http://arts.ucsc.edu/gdead/AGDL/uncle.html