Creative Connections & Client CommunicationsThe Sense of Being
It’s not unusual for a client to wonder –in one degree of specificity or another– why he or she is alive; to wonder about the reason behind it all. The quandary can take the form of general malaise, of discontent, or ultimately ending it all. It can undermine life efficiency and signal unhappiness, oh so frequently sustaining depression, ultimately isolating the Self from life’s progress.
If Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, were our client, we would learn from him his dilemma: to be, aware of the inevitable pain of life, or to die (not to be), but unsure of what death would bring. –Of course, there’s more to it than just that choice: some people do exist with pain, and some people do die sure of blessings ahead.
In his much celebrated book The Courage to Be, the Protestant theologian/philosopher Paul Tillich championed self-affirmation in the face of dread, of anxiety, as the key to the concept of being. How do we emerge individualistically? How do we focus who we are?
As we develop, how do we manage ‘the suffering of outrageous fortune, the pierced arrows of discontent’?
A way to understanding: there is not an individual on earth for whom an astrologer’s circumspect presentation of Moon-Sign significance would not have meaning.
We know that the Moon symbolism dramatically and emphatically reflects the reigning need of the Self, that which commandeers all behavioral forces for individual expression and fulfillment. Our needs are psychological, neurological, visceral, sociological. Our needs make life happen … in the process of working to fulfill them life happens, accumulates in certain ways that define who we are. Needs are inexorable in their press for fulfillment. There’s something vitally necessary about being/becoming ourselves. It is our existential prerogative.
Notice how, in the face of something untoward, frustrating, threatening, we so frequently say, “I certainly don’t need this!” Our perception definitely orders things on a continuum of needs, from the positive to the negative.
Astrology portrays what we do need.
In raising our children, we must be keenly aware of their needs, so we can appreciate who they are.
In managing a relationship, we must be keenly aware of the other’s needs for harmony to prevail and benefits to bloom.
In doing our work, we should best do what we need to do, what we like doing, what underlines our sense of personal significance and value.
We must be aware of what our society needs for us to be so that, with its support, we have better chances for fulfillment.
Upset, we say, occurs often from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. What does that mean?
–The Ascendant axis is our sense of “place”, the stage upon which we dramatize who we are; the Midheaven axis is our focus of existential “time”, our ordering of Self with the movements of life. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time simply suggests we are not being ourselves, something is getting or has gotten in the way; perhaps twenty minutes earlier, or twenty years before. Our space/time continuum is out of focus.
A client consultation just yesterday revealed a change of vocational path … At age 66! This lady had been a teacher for 30-some years, is now retired, and is pursuing another channel for her interests, energies, and fulfillment.
Through her astrology, in an initial consultation two years ago, we had been alerted to, guided to, this possible development, and we were meeting again on the eve of her first new steps into the exciting new direction. The astrology was eloquent. The corroboration that came out of the consultation was giant in scope and importance. We both agreed that she was being confirmed ever so strongly. She was feeling who she was, she was feeling her best.
Corroboration is the grand reward within the process of need fulfillment. We are confirmed in who we are and what we’re doing. We’re right with ourself.
When you study The Moon in any horoscope, see how much you can appreciate about the individual from that symbology alone! Where is that person on the continuum of need fulfillment? Like Hamlet, has he or she ‘lost the name of action?’ How can things be adjusted?
Talk with your clients about this … or the dilemma of being can make ‘cowards of us all.’