Creative Connections & Client Communications
Getting out of Dodge!
***Note for foreign readers: “Get out of Dodge” is a wild-West cowboy saying: when you are facing trouble, get out of trouble’s way. The reference to “Dodge” is to Dodge City Kansas, the heart of the West, a major cattle-shipment center, and a city famous for ‘gun-slinging’ confrontations (at least in the movies) in the late 1880s.
Most therapies in the human sciences by far are structured on the belief that every organism has an inborn tendency to develop its optimal capacities as long as it is placed in an optimal environment. –I like to say that, at all stages of our life development, for our astrology to work, the environment must cooperate. [Quite simply, the ‘wrong’ environment, the uncooperative environment, is a major reason that predictions fail. Please see Synthesis & Counseling in Astrology beginning on page 734.]
We can see our astrological symbolisms corroborating this dramatically. –For example, Uranus is the planetary symbol allocated to individualism, being oneself. Uranus intensifies the needs and behaviors with which it relates by aspect. When we see Uranus, we hear bzzzz, an electric current of accentuation.
When Uranus by transit or Arc involves an Angle, we anticipate major change, upheaval, especially at the Ascendant, the identity center. Accentuation of the Self is in full awareness of the “other”, the 7th cusp, our immediate environment. In relationships, in old agreements, we see routined compromise behaviors, productive complementation challenged and so very often broken down: “I’ve outgrown this relationship,” “he/she just doesn’t understand me;.” “I’ve got to go where people appreciate me.”
So very often, Uranus-Ascendant accentuation carries with it relocation. We choose a new location for our development; we escape; we get out of Dodge, so to speak … or we are hauled along by a spouse scorching a new path for
personal development.
This is especially dramatic when it occurs in the age range of 17-20, when further education is scuttled, when precipitous marriage takes place, when one escapes a depressing home atmosphere; a series of mistakes takes place that is rarely ever redeemed in later life.
The process of individuation is fraught with resistant/rebellious decisions and actions against a non-supportive environment.
***Please, please study the “Notebook” essay of July 31, 2004, “Awareness of LEVEL and fulfillment of Astrological Potentials.”
A client yesterday showed just this situation, leaving school, marrying precipitously, escaping the home, sacrificing further education. Yesterday, 20 years later, she sits undeveloped in her own individuation, terminally bored. –Yet, she has another opportunity upon her right now: tr Pluto conjunct her Midheaven and SA Uranus=Ascendant!!! —How do we manage that with such a client? Is she of an age, is she of a mind, is it practical for her leave this situation finally? To do what? How? What are the steps perhaps to alter the present situation to bring her support for who she is?
Recall horoscopes you have served. Which ones preserved developmental continuity through a supportive environment in the early home, in school, among friends, in further education (focusing on a specialization), in the marriage, on the job, etc.? And which ones were ripped with frustration at those stages, thereby allowing underachievement and victimization to become the pattern of life development?
Our language speaks of self-rescue with many references: running away, getting away from it all, starting over, doing my own thing, calling it quits, and indeed “Getting out of Dodge.”
But change, escape, has to be strategically knowledgeable, not impulsive. –This is where the astrologer should come in, to explain the reasons and objectives of change, i.e., to establish a supportive environment once and for all; not just bolting into the wide blue yonder, a la Thelma and Louise!