Creative Connections & Client Communications

Time, Tension, and Change

The astrologer must have a holistic awareness ever in mind. He or she must have the poise to know and acknowledge with the client that, if little has happened in life, little can be expected to occur. a visit to an astrologer does not change a life pattern except in terms of the understanding gained of the patterns already established.

As we know so well, the past holistically supports the present. It also stimulates and conditions the future. This understanding awakens self-objectification, and strategy emerges from the balance of resources achieved through objectification and sensitive remediation.

Patterns of defensiveness, guilt, and overcompensation are weighty. They burden us as we approach the future. They weigh us down and depress us throughout time. Even physical posture reflects the burden [Just look how your walk changes when you are “down”.] –We must come up with something, release the depressed spring, and ready ourselves for action. The process must be facilitated mentally, physically, and spiritually. We must do this for ourselves … and help our clients to do this for themselves.

A good physical illustration of this process of time, tension, and change can be adapted from the physio-spiritual movements of T’ai-Chi. –Ask the client to do exactly as you do. Explain that the exercise may look silly, but that it does teach an important principle.

Hold both your forearms vertically in front of your shoulders, with the wrists broken limply. Elbows should be close to the torso. The wrists will be at rest, limply hung forward at about the shoulder level. Both you and your client will be doing the same thing.

To ease the awkward time holding the postures, talk to your client about the weightiness of behavioral patterns, the defenses that so easily continue over-fortified long after they’re needed, the energies wasted within routinized behavior. Talk just enough to fill about thirty seconds of time.

Then ask your client to lift his or her hands so that both hands are beautifully and gracefully aligned with the vertical forearm axis. Do the same with him. As the hands are lifted, the wrist joints feel enormous relief. The sensation is natural and free; the posture is prepared for action.

The wrists obviously had been weighted down by gravity. The right angle was developmental tension being absorbed by the system (archetypally, the square). Lifting the hands released energy and defensive depression and defined preparedness for activity. The depressive energies were converted into productivity. The process occurred within time, through change. The process was understood by the mind and appreciated by the body.

Tension is important to alert the Self to action, to give it strength for growth, just as do rocks in the soil against which the roots of plants push in order to reach the sun.

Development, change, makes time happen. Within time, we continuously evolve through periods of challenge and tension, resolution and peace, and go on to new levels of demand upon our human-ness.