Uranus Tag

August 6, 2015 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Bette Davis Eyes

She desires you. She’s always willing; she’s always here, just for you.

“Hello, my name is Denise… I look forward to getting to know you…” she says invitingly. Admittedly her voice is not quite the melted mocha modulation of Scarlett Johansson. Denise is a neophyte. But she’ll never betray you or break your heart.

She is one of Matt McMullen’s future RealDolls. Life-size luscious latex sex robots that may eventually create the illusion of sentience. You can already choose what body type, skin, hair and eye colour you want and even have her toes custom-made. Matt’s RealDolls will integrate a mobile app that is a virtual assistant and companion. They’ll arrive with virtual reality headsets to enhance your experience so that it becomes immersive and sensory. So are Matt’s RealDolls toys for grown-ups? Just like little children play with their toys and immerse themselves in fantasy are these life-size dolls a grown-up substitute for play and imagination, for sensual pleasure and eroticism? Or are they a prettier version of Frankenstein’s Monster where we lose our separateness, our individual boundaries, our humanness, in fusion with fantasy?

Film and literature reflect the zeitgeist. Spike Jonze’s sensitive portrayal of a love that unfolds through the romantic phase into the power struggle in Her and Humans, the science fiction TV series that débuted in June 2015. The porn industry will no doubt drive technology but already “Amy Ingram” is being primed as the perfect personal assistant, seamlessly scheduling meetings politely and unobtrusively. She won’t need sick leave or maternity leave and she won’t need time off to attend weddings or funerals.

Her hair is Harlow gold. Her lips sweet surprise. Her hands are never cold.

The digital revolution is underway, and it’s all about you – or is it? Uranus will be moving through Aries, the first sign of the zodiac until May 2018 and like Icarus we’re flying high on the fire of innovation. We’re talking about change.

Uranus last traveled through Aries in 1927-1935 where individual values were annihilated in the destructive polemics of an ideology. Change, innovation, much like revolutions tend to be messy and often spiral like hurricanes across the lives of ordinary people.

Is change always ‘‘for the good”? Is “progress” always in the best interest of the other animals that live on this earth? Are abstract ideals and revelations always in the best interests of the individual?

In astrological symbolism Uranus is called an outer planet. It orbits silently through space about 2.6 billion to 3.2 billion km from our earth. Uranus is associated with anarchy, social upheaval, as well as technology and ecology. Uranus was first “discovered” in 1781 at a time of upheaval in America and France and an industrial revolution that changed social structure in Britain irrevocably. The ‘‘discovery” of outer planets mirrors the spirit of the time here on earth.

Uranus is often associated with rebellion and individuality – but it is not associated with individual development and emotional or spiritual needs. It is about the individual being caught up in the group, The Collective. Often we are fighting against the very thing that binds us. Of course the more determined we are to stand only in the light, the longer and more odorous our shadow will be – or the Shadow “out there”. The Lion Killer who killed Cecil the lion mirrors our collective or personal disconnect from Nature and all living things. Politicians bloated on power and greed reflect our own appetites and avariciousness.

Perhaps robotics will satiate our craving for fantasy. Perhaps they will bring order and perfection to our mixed-up muddled-up lives. Perhaps they will be an outlet for even for more violence and cruelty. They are Uranian in that they offer a perfect solution to human imperfection.

Everything is interconnected. There is no light without darkness. No lotus without mud. The gaming industry meets virtual reality porn – how far will we go? And will we lose our connection with what nourishes us at the deepest level? Will our authentic Self be dominated by the collective push towards technology as a replacement for real human relationships in all their messiness and unpredictability?

Writes Jungian astrologer, Liz Greene in her superb book, The Art of Stealing Fire, “Uranus can only exercise his creative power from an invisible place, from the depths of the collective unconscious. This is a place we don’t have access to, unless we are shocked into awareness by inspirations which erupt as though out of nowhere, and remind us that once upon a time the whole of the universe was conceived as a single perfect design. And when that happens we might not always be able to handle it very well.”

Today we’re possibly the most connected we’ve ever been. We compulsively share and receive. And yet in the sea of faces and in the eyes that don’t meet ours in our morning commute to work we wrap ourselves up tightly in the neurosis of technology the habit of distraction. Yet it’s unlikely we’ll call upon our legions of Facebook friends or Twitter followers in our darkest hour. In the ceaseless stream of conversation the lonely ones are washed onto the jagged rocks of isolation. Says Thay Thích Nhat Hanh “we are one of the loneliness societies – we need to talk about social recovery… something has gone wrong with us not only as individuals and as a group.”

Most of us do know we live in an illusion of separateness and yet so often we are dazzled by the brightness, the glitter of our world. We make connections and yet remain disconnected.

Can we be individuals in this web of technological connectivity? This is where we may have to make a choice. There are Off buttons on our Smartphones. We can unplug our earphones. We can refuse to use Facebook or WhatsApp. But do we dare?

We’re all individuals, aren’t we?

Betty Davis Eyes Kim Carnes and Betty Davis. Originals.

Like the genes in our body the astrological signs are indicators of the direction in which we may choose to travel this life time. We are a microcosm of a magnificent universal macrocosm. Our horoscope shows the exact position of the sun at the time of our birth and points the way, much like a celestial GPS, illuminating our inner landscape. To find out more about your own birth chart, or to experience a workshop please contact me on info@trueheartwork.com

December 8, 2014 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Making my Way Back

We all have a natural habitat. A place of comfort and ease that connects us to our natural state of Beingness.

Yet, in the straggle of human settlements that stretch like bleached coral reefs across the landscape, many of us are harnessed to thoughts, beliefs, situations that chaff and constrict. In the dissonant babble of other people’s voices we lose our way, forget what it is that we truly need to nurture our soul. We may wander in exile, lost in the endless surge of sensory stimuli that pluck and prod us off course. Our dreams and longings discarded, forgotten in the sweet meadow of distant memories.

Our neuroses may be a response to being removed our natural habitat. Our pliable brains adapt to places and situations, while our wise animal bodies speak to us in metaphor, show their dis-ease in symptoms.

Like humans, animals have an inner nature. And while some of their behaviours and defenses are not always due to overt abuse, their adaptations to an alien environment may distort and warp or erupt in aggressive behaviour.

Anna Breytenbach has devoted her life to inter-species communication. In The Animal Communicator, a documentary in which Anna demonstrates how animals and humans share the same need to be seen and heard, we see how animals and humans display similar trauma and defenses when out of balance with their natural state of being.

Katrina Clay, publisher of Healing Springs Journal, describes a Navajo Horse Blessing she witnessed recently in Saratoga County. Each race horse was blessed with the intention that they would heal, let go of past wounds. Many of the race horses distracted themselves with habitual behaviours.

She writes, “good race horses have every physical need met in order to perform well. What is often neglected, however, is experiencing life true to the nature of horses – outdoors in strong social groups, eating 20 hours a day on a variety of nutritionally low plants while travelling as far as 20 miles a day finding them. While some horses and people are well adjusted to domestication, others habitually fill the empty time ordinarily satisfied by searching for food with hollow patterns of behaviour… For a horse, it may come out as cribbing or biting. For a human it may be workaholism … or any multitude of obsessions.”

Over the past thirty years we have all experienced Promethean changes in technology which has changed the way we think, communicate, behave. March 2015 will see a solar eclipse and the final Uranus-Pluto square in the series of seven which have reflected global events, particularly in the use and mis-use of power as well as the unprecedented proliferation of new technology. Perhaps this final square will bring a sense of resolution for some of us in some deeply personal way. A decision to take the action needed to make those changes that reflect inner growth. A choice to replace habitual thoughts or behaviours with new ways of being in this world that resonates with an authentic place within.

Change is unsettling, even threatening for humans and animals. We, like the other animals on this planet, are hardwired for danger. Our anxious brains have kept us alive for eons. Many of us tend to become more calcified as we age, more fearful, more sealed into our ticks and twitches. For most of us, letting go of our defenses is threatening. For some of us, we will never be ready or willing to embrace the changes which terrify us. And yet, it is in the taking of baby steps that we can truly follow our bliss and find our way back to a place where we feel a Belonging.

“We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination,” writes poet, Ben Okri,in Tales of Freedom.

Beneath the surfaces of our lives our yearnings flutter and soar like the summer swallows on thermals of delight. Our places of nurture which will be different for each one of us. Like the brave green shoots that thrust from cracks in pavements and the trees that stand sentinel alongside swirl and swish of traffic, we live amidst noise and fumes of humans in continuous motion. Yet some of us may know those places of silence. If we allow ourselves to go there, we may re-visit that spacious zone where we expand into our Belonging. Perhaps making our way back will require one day a week where we switch off the phone, leave the incessant demands of our in-box, turn our eyes away from the twitter stream or the distractions that become our armouring and our straight-jacket. Perhaps then we will glimpse our natural habitat. Perhaps then we will know that private place, where we feel our Belonging.

Gemma Hayes from the new album Bones and Longing

Making my Way Back

May 18, 2012 In Astrology, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

The Wind of Change

We cannot ignore the wind of change that is blowing across the world right now. We are living at a tipping point of turbulence and transformation that will test our spiritual mettle. Pluto and Uranus, harbingers of metamorphosis, square one another once more – as they did in the 1930s when our world was darkened by the impending devastation of a second world war. The counter culture and awakening of the 60s, set against the template of a conjunction of Pluto and Uranus in Virgo, is fermenting. We cannot ignore the wind of change that demands that we all commit to own roles as supporting actors on the stage of this collective drama. As the tempest rends the veil of illusion from our eyes and shakes us from our self-absorbed, self-serving Western mantra of ME, we will hear the fierce rattle at the windows of economies and governments. We will witness the annihilation of the tenuous structures in our own lives. These winds that shake the barley may blast us from the echo chamber of our minds, unstop our ears, open our hearts. As Einstein said, “no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” Now more than ever we require a new dimension to our consciousness, a new way of Being in a world where nothing is certain.

Most of us know that the external props in our lives are as flimsy as straws when the wild wind blows. The real battle is not outside ourselves, but within our own soul, and Guidance is there during times of trauma and times of calm, if only we will be still and listen. The Fear that blocks our path may in reality cloak our greed, our vanity, our laziness, our resistance to grow. We may come to a point in our lives when we hunger for more than external insignia of status or a flimsy sense of our own power. The savage grace of a devastating illness, a crisis of loss may be the hallowed moment of our own personal Truth. In the 1200s, an Islamic scholar, Jalal ad-Din Rumi spoke for an inner jihad, not a war against the infidel, but a struggle against the ego. Nothing and everything has changed.

To live authentically in this new world, we will require grit and integrity and the spiritual strength to hold the tension of opposites. Acknowledging, not disowning, or allowing someone else to carry for us our neurosis, our vulnerability, our pettiness, our greatness. Holding the paradox that is our humanness, within a new framework. We cannot reach the soul through the intellect. Our quest is to dismantle the “I”. To enter, as the Spanish mystic, Teresa of Avila, who lived in the burning times of The Inquisition (1500s) said: “let us remember that within us there is a palace of immense magnificence”. The soul is in us, it surrounds us. Yet, one of the disadvantages in living in this modern age of “reason” is that intellect functions with logic, bottom-line analysis, research, spread sheets, strategy, right and wrongs. The intellect seeks solutions, wants results that are measurable. And the soul’s subtle song cannot be heard in the babble of the mind – it speaks to us in parables, metaphor, dreams and fleeting impressions, that float far from the constraints of cause and effect – beyond the borders of “hard work”, outcome based goal setting. The soul does not dwell in the house of Fairness or Reason. It resides in the Mansion of Mystery. We are living in Mysterious times. Jung said that the anima was the face of the soul. She was the Feminine, the vessel of Mystery, the antithesis of logic. Many mysteries are beyond the limit of Reason. They cannot withstand the scrutiny of the curiosity or dissection.

So when we empty ourselves of who we are not, release the need to hide behind a bogus self, the Light pours in to the hollow chambers and infuses us with feminine creativity. When we dwell in the realm of soul ful ness, we are in our dharma, the natural order of things. We are being who we truly are, with no masks, no artifice. As we open our hearts, calm our minds, become more grounded, more sensitive and sure of Who we are… we will dance like dervishes in the vortex of the wild wind. Celebrate as it howls at the doors and rattles the windows of our lives.

“The future’s in the air
I can feel it everywhere
Blowing with the wind of change…”

Scorpions – Wind Of Change

Artwork by Keith Burnett

March 5, 2012 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

If not now?

Behind the proscenium arch of the Greek stage, a tragedy of calamitous human suffering is enacted as government officials quaff cognac and puff at phallic cigars. In this modern day drama, the chorus are ordinary men and women. For many, suicide is the catharsis to loss of livelihood, shelter… and hope, as bloated politicians overstep legal boundaries, and machismo businessmen arrogantly avoid tax payments. This is not really a play about inflated subsidies and debt bingeing of the last decade. Behind the curtains of the euphemistically-named “austerity measures” which darkly ripple across the landscape of so many lives is a far more sombre enactment of a terrible crime.

To the ancient Greeks, Hubris was the greatest crime of all. The outcome, when mere mortals challenged the gods and their laws, overstepping the boundaries, was never without repudiation. There was no escaping the fated denouement. The ancient Greeks had two phrases that encapsulated Greek thinking, and are still relevant today: Know thyself. Nothing in excess.

The glare of the spotlight illuminates the Greek stage, yet in countries, boardrooms, factories, schools, and homes all over the world, misuse of power is a fatally flawed fractal design.

Today, the word Hubris is imbued with a sense of over-confident pride. Only with quiet contemplation and vigilant self examination can we acknowledge where we overstep the boundaries in our ignorance or self-righteousness. Only with scrupulous honesty can we hollow out behaviours that arrogantly assume our entitlement to friendship, or love, or money, or recognition, when it may be we who did not fulfil our side of the bargain. Can we truthfully claim we are owed something when it is so often we who were not present, diligent, honest, or loving? Can we slouch flaccidly in the hammock of our own self-absorption, meting out judgements and criticisms that make others wrong, ourselves right?

All cultures have a code of ethics for thoughts, words and deeds that do not violate ourselves or other living things. In Sanskrit, for instance, Ahimsa means kindness and non-violence towards all living things. In Latin, Primum non nocere means first, do no harm. Some codes take time to crack, and the best we can do is to cultivate the humble awareness of our connection to all living things and to do no harm. “An authentically empowered person is humble. This does not mean the false humility of one who stoops to be with those who are below him or her. It is the inclusiveness of one who responds to the beauty of each soul… It is the harmlessness of one who treasures, honours and reveres life in all its forms”- Gary Zukav.

Since late 2008, when Pluto entered Capricorn, financial and business structures have splintered. We have not yet seen the full trajectory of the Global Recession nor the full implications of misuse of power in government and big business. Recovery will be excruciatingly slow and desperately jobless. The irrevocable sweep of trans-formation (changing form, which always implies a dying) will impact the lives of each one of us in some way. Sombre Saturn, slowly retracing its orbit until October in ethical, judicious Libra, is a stern celestial marker pointing our attention to the necessity for responsibility, realism, and reason, and maturity in our personal lives, in our communities. Austere times require the wisdom of new governance, new law. If not now, then Uranus (until May 2018), dancing a gypsy dance through the sign of Aries (the incendiary energy of rebellion, uprisings, or self-immolation), will shake the flimsy foundations of “civilisation” as we have manifested it.

The fatal flaw in our society is our inherent arrogance. Our collective hubris that has brought Homo sapiens and the plant and animal species on our home planet to the chasm of annihilation.

Bullies and tyrants hold a convenient hook for all that is unacceptable and shadowy, too appalling to own in our personal lives and collectively. Be vigilant for the convenient human tendency to seek a Sacrificial Scapegoat… heavy-handed autocrats, the captains of sunken ships, the boss, ex-husband or wife, the querulous neighbour. It falls upon each one of us to commit to acts of kindness that expand our capacity for love and generosity that open our awareness to our interconnectedness as living creatures on our beautiful home planet. If not now, then when?

Tracy Chapman,If not now, then when?