Two Views

If I was a dad, today I would tell this to my son or daughter:

There are two things in life that are very important to love: the view out your window and the view inside your head. That’s because there will be times in your life when those are what you will see more than anything else.

This past week, those were what I looked at to pass the time. That’s because I was sicker than I’d been in years. And that’s because even sleep was difficult to come by.

As someone who works from home, and has for more than half of his working years, I spend lots of time looking out my windows while I think – or rest from thinking. And since I’ve lived in Austin, I’ve spent a lot of time scanning the scenery inside my head. Oh, there are some ugly thoughts in there: regrets, frustrations, things I’m not happy about, things I fear. But then there’s ideas, and understanding, and things I’ve figured out, and things I’m learning about. I not only have Mercury in Gemini – it’s favorite place, I also have Mercury with nearly its greatest elongation in front of the Sun. My body will never be able to go to the places my mind can. It’ll just never be able to keep up.

And that’s probably a good thing. If we went as fast as our minds, we’d get ourselves in pretty deep do-do before learning a way out of it.

Long spans of sleep were hard to come by this past week, but when I did sleep, chances are I was nightmaring. The worst and most feverish night of my illness, I kept dreaming of two evil orbs haunting me. Neptune was on my left, and either Uranus or Pluto the right. I saw them as mangled spheres of yuck and I was squeezed in between them. In reality, I was probably seeing the swollen orbs in my throat: the left tonsil and the right – growing, painful, and threatening to suffocate me.

During the second night, that was, in fact, the biggest reason I couldn’t sleep. Just as I would fall into a dream, I would stopped breathing. What a trip it was to fall asleep about a hundred times in a night. That minuscule moment’s transition was experienced so many times, it was nearly all that I experienced that whole night (not counting the constant pain that is).

There was one dream that occurred and it amazed me. In that dream, I was looking down on a city freeway system. Some routes were completely clear, and other routes at a standstill with traffic. In fact, so many vehicles were backed up, they blocked access to the clear routes. And there were pile-ups everywhere. When I woke, I was sure that’s what it looked like inside of my body.

In still other dreams, I was actually trying to remove things from my path. I had externalized my body issues like there were ugly objects in my closet preventing me from getting to my stuff. I reached for them over and over and tried to get them out of my way. Lack of air woke me and as soon as I fell back, I was struggling again.

Now all of this might sound ugly to you, but it fascinates me – in retrospect. Dreams (at least mine) are filled with such rich and graphic symbolism. Because I crossed the boundary into and out of them so frequently, I became more aware of the morphing of one reality into another. In both, I was stressed. In both, I fought and struggled. Who knows if I’ll ever understand what was really going on in either plane.

I have a policy with myself around illness. No matter how bad I feel, I give my body 3 days. If the worst is not over, then we seek professional assistance. Even though I am not nearly 100%, after three days, I am impressed with what my body has done.

Abraham (via Esther) often says that the body can heal from any condition, if vibrational hindrances are let go of. They have even stated that the body is capable of regenerating a limb. But of course! If it made it in the first place, it aught to be able to do it again, right? And yet, have we ever seen this with a human?

Nevertheless, in at least this case, I have more or less recovered. Evidence is clearly showing I’ll be at 100% soon enough.

And I’m thinking I will be able to keep class on for Tuesday. I’ve been preparing and I know what we’ll discuss in the first session. I’m expecting a mixed audience, some more familiar with Astrology than others, so to keep everyone interested, I didn’t want to start with simply the most basic stuff. And I found a topic that should be just the right mix for everyone.

In the process, I am learning more about myself. As I consider what to discuss, I of course ponder my own chart, and even while sick and visualizing solely with my mind, I found new insights – astrological evidence of observations I have of myself. Those of you I see in class or for astrology readings will get to hear of some of this fruitful learning!

It’s not necessarily easy to change the view out your windows. Sometimes the best you can do is find what is beautiful out there and focus on that.

With the inner caverns, we have to do the same.  But don’t just look for what’s beautiful in there; find a way to be entertained by the rest of it. It may be horror scenes wrought with fear, but it can provide entertainment and insight.

Before I go, consider this: In that first dream, I was haunted by Neptune and Uranus (or Pluto) – squeezed by them into a tight dark place. So a couple days later, I thought to myself, “When was the last time Uranus or Pluto was next to Neptune in the sky?” and then I researched it.

In my previous post, I spoke of the Loma Prieta earthquake I experienced in October 1989. Would you believe that Neptune and Uranus were right next to each other then? And on the day of the quake, Saturn was sandwiched in between them! In addition, Jupiter opposed the three, and Mercury (and loosely Mars) squared them. Here’s the chart of what it all looked like in San Francisco when the earthquake struck:

Uranus moves around the sun twice as fast as Neptune. In the mid 80s, Uranus approached and reached within 10 degrees of Neptune. In the early 90s, Uranus had caught up (conjunct in 1993) and then surpassed Neptune.  By 1999, Uranus pulled out in front by 10 degrees. Much of the memories I found myself reviewing this past week occurred in that time span. It will take about 171 years – from 1993 – for Uranus to overtake Neptune again…]

Who knows what this all means. That event was certainly an experience, but maybe it changed my life in a way I have yet to recognize.

Trips into our subconscious through high fever are – a trip! I might not ever find a direct connection between then and now, but it is entertaining to have seen this much…