#15 October 14, 2023 - Thoughts on Astrology

Many people will say there’s no scientific foundation to astrology.

They ask, how is it possible that a planet millions of miles away has any influence on us here on Earth? They say they are too far away, their gravitational force is too week, that they are just masses of rock with no conscious will to be exerted on planet Earth, on humanity.

I used to think something similar. Yet at the same time, there has always been this sense that there is some truth to the Zodiac. There has always been something about my sun sign, my birth chart, the unique placement of the planets and stars at the time of my birth that I do resonate with.

I would go out on a limb to say that most people probably do resonate in some sense with theirs. Or at least, they get excited to talk about themselves, and reflect on their unique quirks or habits that set them apart from the other, that was born under a different Sun or Saturn.

If nothing else, the sun and the stars, planet and the moon tell us something about the nature of the universe. The ways they move across the sky, the patterns they make and paths they take at different times of the day, and seasons of the year. There is a relationship that these celestial bodies have with each other. There is a relationship that they have with the Earth. And thus, there is a relationship that they have with us, as inhabitants of this planet.

Again, one might say that they are still too far away to have any sort of influence on us. That we may be in relationship with them, but they still do not have any force or power they can exert over our minds, our bodies, and being.

Nevertheless, we are in relationship with them. If not a physical relationship, then at least there is a mental relationship with them. Our awareness of their presence, has a psychological effect on us. Through our awareness of them we can observe their patterns of movement, and learn what it is their made of. We can learn something about the nature of the universe — that is, the space — that we all find our homes in.

And therefore, with the assistance of the stars, the planets, and the unique patterns they make in the sky, at our birth, and every waking moment, we can learn something about the nature of ourselves. If only we look deep enough.

#5 September 8th, 2023 - The Golden Rule of Being

The other day I was taking a hike through the woods, and as I touched the moss on the old winding tree I thought – what if we treating everything like a person?

Now, this could mean a lot of things, as we know we don’t always treat people that nice. How would we like to be treated by others? Perhaps that’s the standard we should use, when thinking about how we should treat other people, and by this idea I’m proposing -- how we should treat everything.

It’s the golden rule, that has been taught and lived by the sages since ancient times. A quick search on Google calls it the ‘most culturally universal ethical tenet in human history’. Yet what if we expanded it out beyond the realm of culture, and humanity? Because after all, like I mentioned in the last entry, at our core we are all energy. In essence, you could say, we are all one. And this includes not just the energy of humanity, but permeates the energy of all things, living and ‘non-living’.

So this goes deeper than personhood, and into the nature of being itself. Anything that is, that is part of this existence, is being within and of the fabric. So what if we acknowledged the ‘being-ness’ of everything, and treated it how we would like our ‘being’ to be treated. What a more intimate place this world would be.