Astrology

March 20, 2015 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Glorious

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,” wrote Annie Dillard. There are times when the silt of our experience clogs up the arteries of joy. When we spend our lives in days devoid of mystery and wonder.

Finding fault with things outside ourselves becomes habitual, a dripping tap that depletes our lives of the glorious rush of joy and wonderment.Our obsession for thrills, shock and catastrophe corrupts our innocence with the corrosive cyanide of cynicism.

The stories we tell ourselves shape our world. We see what we expect to see. Mystics and shamans, artists and poets have known this for centuries. “Where you look affects how you feel,” says psychologist, author, and developer of brain-based therapy, Dr David Grand, author of “Brainspotting”.

Psychologist, Ken Wilber, suggests that each decision we make, every action we take, requires a construction of boundaries. We can choose and choose again to remain in our relationships or our jobs. We can draw a boundary around what we choose not to choose. We can choose to be grateful and we can choose to be unhappy. We can choose to spend our days trawling through Facebook or watching news which drowns or lifts our spirit.

To the alchemists mercurius was the world-creating spirit. And the spirit imprisoned and concealed in matter. So our mind (Mercury) determines the boundaries of world we live in. We may trap ourselves in a world that we have created by our own perception of reality. We may stay stuck in our own creation. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle states that the very act of observing itself affects that which we observe. The way we observe and evaluate our inner and outer landscape will predispose us to notice a sunflower thrusting its face towards the sun or a discarded cigarette butt lying in the gutter. The way we observe and evaluate our inner and outer landscape will predispose us to see the love we have been yearning for in the eyes of our partner. Seeing with the heart requires faith and hope and a willingness to look through and beyond the boundaries that confine us.

Pollyanna said, “there is something about everything that you can be glad about, if you keep hunting long enough to find it.” And in the midst of the horror surrounding her family during the German occupation of the Netherlands, Anne Frank wrote in her diary, “Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.”

So if we can learn to see with soft eyes this world around us. And if we can be patient and self-loving in our hunt, we may seek out the magical, the wondrous, in the ordinary everyday things that gladden our hearts.

Seeing with our hearts is an art that comes naturally to the very young and those fortunate few who “trip the light fantastic” all through this lifetime. It is an art that must be cultivated with gentleness and diligence in our relationships.

The Magical Child archetype can be constellated more easily by those that notice the dragons swirling in ouroboric circles through diaphanous skeins of cloud than those who consult an app to know that today will bring rain. Faith and hope come so naturally, so easily to the very young and to those courageous enough to allow Hope to fly on white wings. Hope and Love endure in all great works of literature, art and film. And yet, for some, “hope is a tease,” as the Dowager Countess of Grantham of Downton Abbey says to her former lover Prince Kuragin, “designed to prevent us from accepting reality.” Perhaps the magic trick is to balance discernment and intelligent thinking with faith and hope. To make space in the busyness of our lives for unbounded dreams and curious observation. To trust our intuition to guide us into chance encounters and surprising new experiences.

Anna Quindlen writes, “you are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on the bus, or in the car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul. People don’t talk about the soul very much anymore. It’s so much easier to write a résumé than to craft a spirit. But a résumé is cold comfort on a winter night, or when you’re sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you’ve gotten back the chest X ray and it doesn’t look so good, or when the doctor writes “prognosis, poor”… Look around at the azaleas making fuchsia star bursts in spring; look at a full moon hanging silver in a black sky on a cold night. And realize that life is glorious, and that you have no business taking it for granted.”

So look around. Allow your eyes to soften as you gaze without words into the face of the one you love today. Life is Glorious.

Natalie Imbruglia – Glorious

February 9, 2015 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

My Oh My

We may not be who we think we are. Our mistaken identity lies at the core of our searching. It is the denizen of collective and personal beliefs and eons of conditioning. It’s a theme that’s stitched into the warp and weft of myth, fairy tale and literature, superbly depicted in movies like Maleficent.

“We are caught in a trance, a belief that “something is wrong with me” that can be fixed or controlled by growth hormones, mood sensors, happiness meters or surgery, smoothed away by Botox, cured by finding a new therapist, improved with a new lover.

We all have a longing to be seen, to be understood (mindful seeing) and to be loved for what is seen. The wound of unlove is heart-breakingly evoked by Debra Nystrom in her sublime poetry. When we feel unlove we feel we do not belong, we are invisible, cast aside, uncared for. The wound of unlove festers, becomes a necrosis. Our inherent sense of our unworthiness sleeps lightly and wakes each new day when our inner world meets the outer world. For most of our adult lives we learn to re-parent ourselves, to weave together new narratives, new ways of being accepting of who we are. Yet for most of us the voice within keeps asking, “how am I doing? Or am I enough?”

South African poet, Arthur Nortje wrote of his own exile from his country, his people and from himself. He was exiled in the darkness of depression, his life force dissipated by drugs. He wrote, “The isolation of exile is a gutted warehouse at the back of pleasure streets,” and died at twenty-eight years old, never having known his true face, his spiritual heart, his pleasure street.

There are many paths to awakening.

For some of us it is a descent into the Underworld where we are dismembered by depression, an illness that ravages our body, a loss that dissolves the life we once knew, exiles us from ourselves. We cannot see past ourselves until the time comes when we are ready. “when the veil of the trance lifts, the pleasures and pain, the hopes and fears of our small space-suit self still come and go, but they no longer define us,” writes Tara Brach in her book, True Refuge.

The characters in the 16^th Century Commedia dell’ Arte were stock characters. The actors had no lines to memorise though they did need to understand and embody their roles –they improvised, fleshing out the plot, making up the dialogue as they went along. Shakespeare knew that “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players,” and as we go through the scenes in our lives we make up the dialogue and the action, the conflicts, the dramas. And yet, writes Byron Katie,“reality is always kinder than the stories we tell about it.” In her work she brings fear-based beliefs and the wound of unlove into the light of awareness where they dissolve with questions that deepen our attention, invite us to pause, to inquire whether the assumptions about our “reality” are really true.

Sometimes we may pause long enough, breathe deeply enough, to recognise a purposeful pattern, a deep Intelligent Design at work. We may feel a connection to the Greater Whole, or be reminded of the gossamer veil between life and death.

Ram Dass in Polishing the Mirror: How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart says that like Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers what we have been looking for has been here all along. And yet, “spiritual practices can themselves become hindrances and obstacles.” Our lives can become performances requiring perfect delivery, problems seeking a solution, reminders of the rigid roles we play that mask our True Self. Tim Leberecht writes in his excellent piece, Un-Quantify, we “focus on measuring multiple aspects of ourselves to achieve an unreachable nirvana of human optimization.”

Nikos Kazantzakis, Greek philosopher and celebrated author of Zorba the Greek, said pragmatically, “you think too much, that is your trouble. Clever people and grocers, they weigh everything.”

“Only the examined life is worth living,” another wise Greek philosopher famously remarked.

“But it is important to remember that we can examine it without quantifying it. In business and beyond, we can manage what we can’t measure, and in fact we do it every day,” says Tim Leberecht.

To claim a life worth living, he recommends “unplugging from your tools and your carefully cultivated matrix of data. Instead of tracking how many calories you torched during a workout, concentrate on the movements you make, what burns, and what doesn’t—are you able to get out of your head and let go of earlier stresses? To be truly open and present for moments that will bring you what tools can’t track—joy, laughter, happiness, wonder, and love—it is necessary to be attuned to the world around you. What will make you feel more satisfied? Six-months of sleep data, or a belly laugh with a co-worker? You will maximize and optimize but lose the romance of getting to know.”

To claim a life worth living, Buddhist teacher, Ajahn Buddhadasa suggests that we “don’t do anything that takes you away from your body.” Mindful awareness is one way to connect with a safe home base when we are flayed by worry, lacerated by fear. Our bodies live in the present. So when we become aware of our bodies, our inner landscape; when we quieten our minds, connect with our own breath, we connect with the earth that is our Home.

Leonard Cohen’s voice as smooth and dark as molasses sings out for all of us who have loved and lost another or ourselves …

“Held you for a little while
My, oh, my, oh my
Held you for a little while
My, oh, my, oh my…”

Yet we are not in exile. We are Home. We are here now. Doing the best we can.

My Oh My from the album Popular Problems by the inimitable Leonard Cohen

January 19, 2015 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Guardian

We say we want peace on earth. We want wars and genocide to end. We say we want forests to grow and rivers to run with sweet water. We say we want to watch our children play. A Course In Miracles says, “just like a sunbeam can’t separate itself from the sun, and a wave can’t separate itself from the ocean, we can’t separate ourselves from one another. We are all part of a vast sea of love, one indivisible Divine Mind.”

We know this in the deep stillness at the Centre of our Beingness. And then we fall asleep once more to waken to the savagery and tragedy in the offices of satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo and brutal scapegoating of Raif Badawi.

We’re crucified by polarity, still living in the tribal mind that acts out of scarcity and survival. Still demands an eye for an eye, a precious life for a precious life that must be weighed in the bloodied scales of blind belief or castrated custom. The ponderous form of Pluto’s slow transit through Capricorn will bring the darkness of our personal and Collective Shadow into form: Stasi States, the Cyclops eye of Big Brother, the silent trawling through great lakes of data by Google and Facebook, the porous walls of private chat rooms.

Religious oppression, where human dignity, creativity, uniqueness and freedom of expression cower in the shadows. Where whistle-blowers like Edward Snowden and Julian Paul Assange are silenced. Where Raif Badawi faces, what astrologer and blogger, Joanna Watters calls “barbaric consequences” for his thoughts and words which challenge the tribal mind and threaten the status quo.

Bruce Lipton writes in his book, The Honeymoon Effect, “There is a fundamental biological imperative that propels you and every organism on this planet to be in a community, to be in relationship with other organisms. Whether you’re thinking about it consciously or not, your biology is pushing you to bond. In fact, the coming together of individuals in community (starting with two) is a principle force that drives biological evolution.”

And yet how are we bonding? Are we seeing without sight, hearing without ears when we grip so tightly to our need to be right?

We all see the world differently. Or we like to think that we do. It depends on which lenses we choose to wear. And it depends on how we wear the lenses that are chosen for us.

“Some toxic co-authors live in our world, and others live in our minds,” writes clinical neuropsychologist Mario Martinez in his book, The MindBody Code. “Discarding toxic co-authors involves both literal and figurative action.”

Nelson Mandela said, “No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” Tolstoy believed that if only we managed to see through our superficial differences and our fear of the other’s otherness, we’d recognize instantly the universe’s basic “law of love”. It is something to which we are born and attuned, only to forget as we enter adulthood; until we choose, consciously to question, to let go of our learned bias and to see in the other their differentness, even as they brush against our tender places.

Where and how will we be the Guardians of each other’s hearts? How do we demonstrate by our words our actions, Tolstoy’s “law of love”? How can we be the Presence, the Peace, the Generosity we want to see in this world, if not by daily remembrances, daily demonstrations of Grace, of compassion for ourselves and all other sentient beings?

How do we guard ourselves from slipping into the stagnant mire of old thinking without sitting back and saying, it’s just human nature, or more eloquently, the real problem is in the heart of man? Where do we draw the line, erect the wall, raise the drawbridge in this permeable, digital world, stripped bare of mystery, bleached of nuance, devoid of dappled delights, empty spaces, pauses in the bustle of busyness? How do we become Guardians of boundaries when our primitive impulse is to become ensnared in hot-blooded, self-righteous outrage at a world where insanity postures as politics and madness dons the cloak of religion?

Perhaps we can be vigilant of our own energy leaks, the thoughts that fly like stealth missiles towards nations or leaders who provide a convenient hook for our own Shadow, our own primitive survival impulses which feed on fear and superstition, good and bad, them and us.

For me, it is the poets, the artists, the musicians who live among us who dust our dull minds and open our blackened hearts with the shimmering sparkle of their Divine Vision. 13th-century Islamic scholar, poet and visionary,Rumi writes in this exquisite verse from Wetness and Water:

How does a part of the world leave the world?
How can wetness leave water?

Do not try to put out a fire
by throwing on more fire.
Do not wash a wound with blood.

No matter how fast you run,
your shadow more than keeps up.
Sometimes it’s in front.

Only full, overhead sun
diminishes your shadow.

But that shadow has been serving you.
What hurts you blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
Your boundaries are your quest.”

Three Hearts – Benetton. Photograph by Oliviero Toscani

Alanis Morissette – Guardian

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 1, 2014 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Delicate

And so it all ended with a whimper. An event “so scary that I’m giving classes on it,” said one astrologer with a keen nose for fear-based hype. The heralded Cardinal Grand Cross of 2014 did not bring the fireworks or big bangs predicted by many astrologers who warned clients to lie low, not to make any decisions. There were the usual political smoke and mirrors. The usual human dramas. The ominous rumble of anarchy in the Ukraine. The ghastly spectre of yet another self-serving dictator in Russia standing on the bodies of those he has trampled as Putin struts and pouts. But for most of us mere mortals the astrology has spotlighted the need for some kind of internal shift. Tension, crisis, chaos, pain, is how we humans have evolved over the millennia, and many of us may choose (unconsciously) to “hit rock bottom” in our lives – illness, relationship break-ups, or the euphemistically-named “down-sizing”, all of which is change coming at us from the outside. Change thrust upon us through illness, divorce or retrenchment so often leaves us truly down-sized as we clear our desks and carry out our possessions in a small brown box.

The eclipse season began with a much publicised lunar eclipse on April 15^th, and ended when she met by her consort, the Sun with a solar eclipse on April 29^th, all celestial markers for new cycles of change in our lives if we are willing to do what it takes and stick with the programme.

We say we want to change. And there are times we truly mean it. We begin new eating regimes, new jobs and new relationships. We find a new hairdresser. We have a make-over.

Change is a word that slips silently through the cracks of our over-committed, overwhelmed lives. We know the world around us is changing in a way that leaves us breathless. The delicate ecology of our Blue Planet is in a process of mass extinction. Forests are felled for the cancerous spread of housing estates, shopping malls, and factories that make more stuff for us to buy and throw away. Bees are dying; coral reefs now pale spectres of their incandescent beauty. Robotics are replacing humans. Without work we cannot feed our families. Yet, like laboratory rats in a frenzy of heated oestrus, we continue to breed more and more children. We want to change; we know our collective survival depends upon it. But we don’t.

For many of us “change” has no more power than a low-wattage light bulb to shine light into the dark corners of our personal lives. Change means to make different, to alter, to modify, to transform. And yet, deeply rooted in the meaning is also a sense of barter – an exchange of energy or substance. Change, like love is also a verb. When we change something in our life, whether it is a habitual pattern of thinking or behaving, a job or a way of relating, we need to let go of something. Even if this means walking away from a relationship that has ignited our Victim, Addict or Rescuer Archetype or literally endangered our health or wellbeing. Change means no more excuses. To change is to choose.

Most of us (unless we live in tribal communities or cower in silent submission in the shadow of repressive political or religious tyranny), choose the cereal we want to eat in the morning, the material we read on the internet, the lovers we invite into our beds. Most of us know, or think we know, that all evolution requires continual change and that life on this earth is a cycle of birthing and growing and dying. And yet when the Angel of Opportunity comes and taps us on the shoulder, we ignore her. We walk on by tenaciously clutching the bony hand of old behaviours and beliefs about the world. Every moment of every day we make choices – mostly driven by ghosts from the past that move silently through the chambers of faded memory. Thought patterns and behaviours with long dark cords that connect them still to the Tribal Mind are woven into synapses. We fret and chafe against the stifling cords that bind us to our pain. We stand, trussed up in our fears, our excuses, our hot-headed reactivity, our slippery avoidance, at the threshold of change which we say we want – but only on our terms at our own pace – and in a way that will not shatter the casing of our lives.

As we cross the threshold into this new astrological Age of Aquarius and terms like “The Law of Attraction” or “The Field” become part of the common lexicon, we know that change can happen in a nanosecond. So our choices mirror our experiences, draw in our lovers, our friends. Our choices bring us those who prick our delicate skins with betrayal, acts of violence, greed or callousness. We can choose to forgive – not condone the behaviour of those who have wounded our hearts with carefully calculated actions that puncture but leave no exit wound.

Our spiritual teachers have been saying over and over again: Every thought creates form. Every choice has a consequence. Every thought, every emotion is an act of creation – there is no such thing as any activity of our mind or heart that is not an act of creation. Our choices are enormously powerful. We can choose to accept things the way they are. We can choose to take action to change those things which can be changed. And we can pray for wisdom to know the one from the other.

Damien Rice. Delicate

February 21, 2014 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

In Your Dreams

In the psycho-energetic model of the universe, our thoughts create our own reality. Yet still, many of us live between two mind-sets.

One, our “ego-self” asks, “if our thoughts create our own reality then why do we not heal ourselves in a millisecond? Why do we experience a crisis of meaning in our lives and wonder whose life is this anyway? And if we can summons our soul mate by Cosmic Order what happens when our ‘dream lover’ turns into a real person? Did Cinders really live happily ever after with her Prince Charming?”

The other mind-set, our Wise Man or Woman within leaps joyously into the magical realm of the non-ordinary world with infinite possibilities. We co-create miracles.

The Law of Attraction claims that “like attracts like”. So what you focus on – “positive” or “negative” will bring you “positive” or “negative” results. Denounced as pseudoscience by many, the concept that we, as mere mortals, create our own reality has taken root and flourished since it was first planted in the early 1900s. A plethora of books followed the movie The Secret (2006) and the book (2007) with its numerous add-ons: Money and the Law of Attraction: Learning to Attract Health, Wealth & Happiness. A recent offering from Pam Grout on the same theme is E-Squared (a Fifty Shades of Grey for spiritual dudes, i.e. holy without the fuck.) Its popular appeal has hoisted sales and it is billed as a number one New York Times best seller. Ms Grout echoes the current create your own reality belief: “What shows up in our lives is a direct reflection of our inner thoughts and emotions”, she writes. The hairy underbelly of this, of course, can be taken too literally: “if you end up paralysed in a motor accident, find you have TB or cancer in that dark shadow in your lung, you created this reality.” And for some, this assumption may unleash the Hound of the Baskervilles baying guilt, fear and judgement.

E-Squared also fits the current model of things that can be measured, proven by “experiment” in linear time. So like the new app on our Smartphone that measures and quantifies our sexual performance (number of thrusts per minute, noise level, etc.) we measure and record Miracles. A masculine model of a perfect world. According to Ms Grout, you can demand an unquestionable sign that a field of energy exists. You can also impose a deadline for your demand. And within just 48 hours you will receive a gorgeous handmade leather purse, a free ski trip to Lake Tahoe, or meet your dream lover. “According to physicists there’s a zero point field… where every possibility exists. For example, there’s the possibility you could be a ballerina, another that you could be a U.S. senator. Still another possibility is being a bag lady in Haight-Ashbury,” writes Ms Grout in her street-talk’n breezy style. And yet …what are the chances that the child of a heroin addict mother living in the slums of Detroit will be a U.S senator? Or a midget can be a top basketball player? Can you be a ballerina if you have cerebral palsy?

Are we naïve or arrogant? Perhaps blissfully oblivious to the deep unconscious currents that will inevitably wash to shore those disowned parts of ourselves? Yet there are many who believe that if we can will it into being, visualise it, wave our magic wands, our prince will fall on his knees and ask us to marry him, our teenager will stop taking drugs. Perhaps our neighbour’s son won’t come home from school to find his father hanging from the rafter.

Many people on this earth still feel as powerless as our ancestors once did when they faced natural disasters, illness, or invasion. The “you can create your own reality” mind-set certainly has empowered, granted hope, released magical energy that has been suppressed by centuries of patriarchal (Saturnian) religious and state decree.

Perhaps the Miracle is within the so often harsh “reality” – it is up to us individually to sort the gold from the dross. Are we ready to move from the Magician Archetype into the Archetype of the Alchemist? And if we are Alchemists in the laboratory of our own lives, are we aware that all transformation demands a dying and a death? That alchemy is a painstakingly slow and putrid process.

Collectively, we are going through seismic change reminiscent of the 1930s and 1960s and this may manifest in events that shatter the foundations of our personal lives. We will witness world events that crack and break open hoary old structures, new technology that transports us into the twilight realm of sci fi.

We cannot construct a new model of thought without homage to the old. The ancients believed that only the gods could Create. That it was Fate that toppled empires. Tossed small ships upon jagged rocks. Snapped off the promise of a life, without any mercy. If you believe that with self-reflection and intention, we can all at some level, edit or remake the movies that play across the screens of our minds; that we can temper the flame of our desire; receive new experiences without anxious expectation or urgent grasping, then perhaps we can coax a change in our perception of the experience of chronic ill health, loneliness, death, betrayal and loss.

For eons, spiritual traditions have taught that it is acceptance, surrender to All That Is that brings us the peace and happiness that is truly powerful. For eons, shamans and mystics have crossed over the threshold into non-ordinary states of being. They have walked in miracle and wonder. Poets, musicians and artists still visit that holy place of mystery. So do little children. Our world would be drab and prosaic place without magic and miracles and hope…

So, to engage with this new paradigm consciously is to question ourselves honesty. Do we really believe that we create our own reality? Do we believe in Miracles? Do we embrace the non-ordinary realm with a child-like innocence, a wide eyed expectation of a Miracle? Perhaps we must work consciously with both the Magician Archetype and the Alchemist to co-create a reality that embraces the bitter sweetness of this life. For me it is not either/or – but both the dream and the co-creation of a reality that brings peace and wonder and joy-filled acceptance of those things we cannot change. I do believe in Miracles. How about you?

From the album In Your Dreams Stevie Nicks

Images by John Singer Sargent and Tyra Nur Athirah

February 11, 2014 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

The One I love

This one goes out to the one I love.

As cloyingly sentimental or overtly commercial as this celebration may seem, Valentine’s Day has survived world wars and financial crashes. It has evolved from rumbustious fertility ritual origins enacted by the Romans. Emerged from the gruesome torture and execution of men we now call saints and martyrs. On February 14^th in most places on this earth, millions of people will demonstrate through chocolates, music and flowers, their longing to love and be loved.

Romantic love is celebrated in song and literature. It’s a multi-million dollar Bolly-Hollywood illusion that mirrors our collective longing back to us from the silver screen. The glittering grandeur of star-spangled romance leaves us breathless, aching for more. Love lives in the imaginal realm of our soul. It emboldens and ennobles, plucks us out of our literal life into the full-throated drama of our emotion and our fantasy, flings off our inhibitions, invites us to create a-new.

We’re cautioned that Love is an illusion. I believe that like Santa and the Easter Bunny authentic love comes to only those who truly believe. “Illusion” is derived from the Latin, “in ludere,” which is translated as “in play.” And when our world-weary souls expand in joyful play, our lives are graced with “illusions” that may enfold us and protect us from “reality” which may be a mere stand-in for an authentic life.

Scientific research purports that love lies in the brain, not the heart; that lust has lodged in our brains since Pleistocene era. That passion can be measured and scanned. The premise is that love shape-shifts from a coat of many colours into a knobbly old cardigan.

There are theories that suggest it is body odour that draws us to our lovers. That when we fall in love it’s more about fertility – and our collective survival. So men are drawn to fertile women with perfect waist-to-hip ratios. Women will lust after high testosterone men with angular jaws and wide shoulders. That we fall for healthy symmetrical faces unblemished skin and pouting sexually aroused lips. What airless little boxes we would live in if this were true.

Psychoanalysts have their theories too – when we “let fall our hearts” and tumble into Love’s terrain we enter the domain of lunatics. Those in love have a similar profile to those who suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder, they tell us. Other currently favoured theories suggest we seek to find in our lover what we did not receive in our childhoods. It could be the raise of an eyebrow, his smell, the sound of her voice or the curve of her shoulder. In love we seek the familiar. We nostalgically yearn to reclaim the past … So our adult years are a ceaseless quest to recapture the love and attunement we did not receive from childhood caregivers. So we say we’ve found our soul mate, or met again from a past life. Perhaps we have. There may be a sense of recognition or a soul connection that defies the tick in the box. Scientists say it is oxytocin, the bonding hormone, that we must honour each wedding anniversary. And this Valentine’s Day, it’s the delicious dopamine drenched cocktail that brings lovers together. So is romantic Love merely a chemical like Prozac? Do we blame dopamine and serotonin for luring us time and time like hapless moths to swoon and die in passion’s flame? It’s the caudate nucleus of the brain that lights us when we fall in love. Or can be something far more mysterious, more nuanced, more subtle? Love opens the windows to those parts of ourselves that may have lain hidden and dusty for decades. It initiates us into the complexities of being human. It anoints us with courage and jealousy. It brings us unexpected endings. It mangles and cracks open our calloused hearts.

Love in all its splendid visitations is a Mystery. Can we categorize and quantify and measure Love as our bodies soften and our hearts unfurl in a thousand blossoms? Can we fear that which captivates our soul? Love’s landscape cannot be measured or quantified by the intellect. Its nuances must be imbibed through the heart. Savoured with all the senses. Love cannot be separated from the rich loam of the imagination. And each one of us will experience Love quite differently.

So expect to be moonstruck by the primrose-coloured light of the full Leo Moon on Valentines’ Day. For those of us who have known even one Great Love this life time… Aren’t we the Lucky Ones?

Rosie Thomas sings enchantingly, the one i love

February 4, 2014 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

It’s The Little Things

How do we prepare for those things that impale us on the sharp horns of dilemma? The challenges that test our endurance and spiritual mettle? When someone we love is dying. Do we fly across continents to hold their hand? Do we wait and go to their funeral? Do we leave our marriage and hope to find lasting love in the arms of another? Do we resign from our well-paid job and back pack across Asia?

We wouldn’t embark on a trip through the Namib Desert without water. We wouldn’t apply to appear on Survivor without knowing how to light a fire, or volunteer to nurse in Haiti unless we’d honed our nursing skills. And yet blithely we wing our way through relationships, marriages, careers, parenthood and the process of ageing and dying, so often with very little competency or application. “Experts” proliferate offering scratching’s of undigested knowledge unseasoned by experience or wisdom – they thrive in a world that venerates the quick fix, the easy answer. Suddenly the wolf is at our door and how he huffs and puffs and blows our straw house down.

“Sweat the small stuff” says astronaut Chris Hadfield who claims to be annoyingly optimistic and buoyant by nature, but writes eloquently about the power of negative thinking in his book, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth. His maxim and one that has saved his life and the lives of crew members, is to anticipate a problem before it becomes a calamity. “Spend time visualising defeat and figuring out how to prevent it.” His take-action, attend to the details (meticulously over and over again) approach to life is one that pioneers, athletes and those of a competitive nature use to achieve the results they desire. Counterintuitive behaviour, deliberate team work, helping others in competitive situations, learning from mistakes and importantly, seeing criticism (even of the most personal kind) as helpful, are all tactics he uses to perfect performance and cope with the vicissitudes of life.

Preparation for departures and new journeys requires focus. Contingency plans can reign in wild panic. The combination of focused thought, visualisation and action can help ease our passage through the stormy waters of change, or bring a sense of personal triumph. When we find ourselves in times of trouble we know how to reach down to that still calm place within. To override the primitive response of our old brain. Like practicing a fire drill, or a resuscitation procedure that stays “in the muscle” of our memory, it helps to have a plan of action, a sequence of events that grounds us in the moment. It helps to find the epicentre of calm amidst calamity.

Mercury travels Retrograde from February6^th till the 28th, a cosmic in-breath and a timely reminder to focus on the little things and “be prepared”. Mercury rules all forms of transport; agreements and all means of communication, especially gossip. It’s domain is business matters, postage, vehicles, mobile phones, cars and computers. So cross the Ts and dot the Is. Back up, re-charge and repair. Attend now to the details we so often brush aside like crumbs as we rush on to the next thing. Practice that Cinderella virtue – patience.

Professor Randy Pausch, in his Last Lecture, delivered months before he died of cancer, says with lightness and great humour, “Another way to be prepared is to think negatively. Yes, I’m a great optimist. but, when trying to make a decision, I often think of the worst case scenario. I call it ‘the eaten by wolves factor.’ If I do something, what’s the most terrible thing that could happen? Would I be eaten by wolves? One thing that makes it possible to be an optimist, is if you have a contingency plan for when all hell breaks loose. There are a lot of things I don’t worry about, because I have a plan in place if they do.”

Everything in our magnificent Universe is in constant motion. “Not to decide is to decide. Try not to make choices by default,” says Neale Donald Walsh.

Calm methodical preparation increases our discrimination and tones competency and discernment. “All things are ready, if our mind be so,” the Bard said. So be calm. Make preparations. Envision your journey and be grateful for all the little things that dust our lives with joy.

It’s The Little Things – The Gothard Sisters

Chris Hadfield An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth

February 18, 2013 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Give Me Love

I chose a TV-free, news-less diet many years ago. I have no idea what’s trending, what’s new, who’s saying what on Facebook, because in the shrug of human evolution the fundamental challenges stay the same.

We still struggle to accept each other’s “otherness”. We still sink into the oblivion of psychological fusion with something or someone who mirrors our own version of our own story about the world. We are anesthetised by a monochromatic life where everything fits with our version of “reality” our belief in what is “right” and “wrong”. We react to the bits that niggle and jar us out of our somnambulant complacency with outrage or distain. “Love for ourselves, despite our imperfections, can come alive only when we also risk loving others – accepting their imperfections. And then we understand how starkly our attitude to ourselves, and especially the presence or absence of a feeling of self-worth, is mirrored in the larger society we are collectively creating,” writes Stephanie Dowrick.

“Boundaries” like “Co-dependence” are words that have lost their conflagration. The Sun is now in the boundary-less sign of Pisces, where it meets a line-up of planets, transiting at this time through the silent darkness of the heavens. The Piscean quality of beatific new love feels, tastes and smells so sweet because we see reflected in the eyes of our Beloved, our own Divinity. We breathe in his essence through diaphanous hearts; we invite him in through our transparent minds. We rock him gently in the soft bosom of our in-breath and our out-breath. In his gaze, we greet ourselves.

Love, like Life, is a tight-rope walk that requires vigilance and balance. There is no “right way” or even a “wrong way” to place one foot in front of the other on this eventful journey, and we are all travellers on the same road.

A friend, recently returned from a month in Pune, in India, was shocked to discover that not all Indians are “spiritual”. And that in contrast to western individualism, the general view in that industrialised, polluted, over-populated part of our world does not embrace her values of sanctity of life, gentleness, cleanliness or even common courtesy. In the hologram, we see what we want to see, until it morphs into shadow. Beneath the immaculate robes of the guru, behind the altar of the priest and within the troubled heart of a golden-haired celebrity or sportsman, we find our own self-doubt and hubris that haunts like a hungry ghost. And yet we are so often shocked and saddened, outraged or betrayed, when our idol or loved-one must inevitably topple and fall into the salty soup of humanity.

We live on a binary planet with an illusive Moon that appears to be much bigger than the Sun when she is in her ripe fullness.

It is within the dappled shallows of contrast that we experience our duality. It is within the interplay of intense passion and the insecurity of possessive love in adult relationships that we discover our suffering. It is within the net of psychological fusion that scoops us like flapping tadpoles, confused and dying, unable to breathe alone. It is down the dark depths of our own narcissism that we draw up muddied water to discover the Lotus Flower of our soul’s beauty.

“The cure for narcissism,” writes Thomas Moore “is to move from love of the self, which always has a hint of narcissism in it, to love of one’s deep soul.” It is in this place of quiet stillness that our differences become obsolete, that the chitter-chatter of our self-protective questions crackle underfoot, a carpet of russet autumn leaves in the sunlight. It is in this place of quiet stillness that we need no longer struggle or strive. It is in this place of quiet stillness that we discover Love is all there is.

Tadpoles Swimming – Eiko Jones

Ed Sheeran – Give Me Love

December 14, 2012 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Skyfall

This is the end. Hold your breath and count to ten … This portentous year of 2012 has been a shamanic journey of self-growth and spiritual home-coming for many on this planet. For some this has been a sky fall year where things “happened out of the blue.” Our bodies once robust and infallible began to falter. Our relationships demanded more honesty, more compassion. Our work brought us gifts of humility and gratitude, or a firm conviction that we must remove ourselves from a toxic environment. For millions on this planet, 2012 offered no choice. No time for self-reflection. No peace or contentment. As we approach the solstice many of us may feel, as Marion Woodman says, “dragged towards wholeness”.

We speak lightly, foolishly, of change and “transformation” as if it was a Gok Wan make-over. Trans-formation is a radical changing of form. A literal or metaphorical process of dying. And transformation involves the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. “Most of us can only let so much go at a time,” says Woodman.

This is the end. The mid-summer or mid-winter Solstice 2012 marks a zero point as the sun ingresses into the sign of Capricorn 11:15:25 AM in Greenwich, England and at other times in other places all over the world. Collectively we stand at the door of the sweat lodge where we must sit in the heat of global warming, the discomfort of overpopulation. Collectively we must heed the final drum beat of a way of life that will and must change irrevocably. There is a sense of “Fatedness” about the GMT chart for this solstice. Jupiter (signifying Faith, Hope, Belief, and a sense of Expansion), Saturn in Scorpio and Pluto in Capricorn (herculean systemic breakdown, a kind of cosmic colonic irrigation) form a YOD which is also called “The Finger of Fate” or “The Finger of God”. Jupiter is at the focal point of this YOD. It is the signal for inevitable change and transformation to occur in the outworn structures of our civilization.

The sun will rise on December 22^nd 2012. The sky will not fall down chicken-licken. Our computers will not crash. There will be no cataclysmic ending. Just another turn in the great wheel of the year.

The Maya apparently called this day “Creation Day’. Author of the Gaia Hypothesis, Peter Russell writes,”rather than a precise date on which major changes happen, I see 2012 as the temporal epicentre of a cultural earthquake.”

The skyscript fortells of profound and inevitable change, which will be fiercely resisted by many who cling like bloated ticks to power, gorging on greed. Pluto will be uncompromising and relentless in breaking down what is no longer necessary to our personal and collective evolution. By December 2014, Saturn will bring to the surface all that is darkly hidden in our lives personally and globally. The square between the Sun and Uranus in this chart heralds radical change, upheaval and liberation from the old ways. The Moon makes a separating square from Pluto. We are living at the end of an epoch. The dark hyperbole of the apocalyptic prophecies terrify. They cut close to the bone. We are entering an age of breakdown of hoary old structures, outmoded beliefs.

This is the end of verdant girdles of rainforest. This is the end for wildlife that follow ancient migratory routes now barred by barbed wire fences and the splattered spread of concrete cities. This is the end for the Sumatran tiger, the Vaquita porpoise, the Javan and African Rhino. This is the end for the polar bear. This is the end for the ancient amphibians. This is the beginning of the end of life as we know it. We stand on the brink as individuals. As a species. As sea levels rise, a mass extinction of as high as 90 percent of our earth’s creatures, writes Mark Lynas in Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet. Global temperatures will be hotter than they have been for the last 50 million years. Most of southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East will be uninhabitable. Millions of men, women and children will migrate in great masses in search of food, water and lebensraum. Perhaps “this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper,” as TS Eliot wrote starkly and with chilling prophecy in The Hollow Men.

“We have passed a critical threshold”, a new report from accountancy firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers states. “Even doubling our current rate of decarbonisation would still lead to emissions consistent with 6 degrees C of warming by the end of the century.” This report urges radical transformation in the global economy. Rapid implementation of renewable energy. A halt on deforestation and industrial emissions. Now.

On December 21^st 2012, many will gather together in prayer or meditation. And for millions on this planet, the solstice of 2012 will be just another day. Unless we all choose differently. We may not individually be able to halt industrial emissions or stop the slaughter of the rhino, or the melting of the polar ice caps. Our urgent task now is to Love and to Be Loved. To walk lightly on this beautiful planet. To honour all living things. We cannot afford the luxury of negativity and scepticism. We will simply have to “pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off… and start all over again.” Living our lives more consciously. “It’s only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth – and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up that we will begin to live each day to the fullest as if it was the only one we had,” wrote Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. We all have a limited time on this earth, collectively and personally. Our Faith (Jupiter ) will be our only solace and ultimate salvation.

So at this sacred portal. This turning point in the great wheel of the year let us take a moment to be still and to listen to the bird song. Let us breathe in Hope. Let us open our hearts to give and receive Love. Let us feel the heartbeat of Mother Earth and allow our own hearts to beat in unison. We are stardust. We are of the same essence as this earth, this boundless universe. We are witnessing the death of the old, the birth of the new.

This is the end. And the beginning.

The inimitable Adele’s incomparable voice soars above the haunting lyrics of Skyfall. This is the signature song that frames the 23rd Bond movie, and a powerful anthem to herald the End Times.