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Astrology Notes: Astrology, Healing and the Evolution of Consciousness
Love is Everything
Healing Your Life with Unconditional Love
(Excerpt from newly released book)
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by Martin Lass with Dr. John DeMartini |
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NOTE: In this excerpt, "U-Love" is shorthand for "unconditional love" and "C-love" is shorthand for "conditional love."
CHAPTER 3
I SAY YES, YOU SAY NO -WHY THERE IS CONFLICT
Where there is division there must be conflict.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti
I can discover the Love (U-Love, unconditional love) that can Heal my life by first understanding more about C-love (conditional love) and more about how C-love rules my day-to-day life. The first thing to understand is that C-love actually provides the starting point for finding U-Love, as well as constantly driving me toward U-Love. How is this so? The first clue is:
· One of the hidden blessings of C-love is its natural tendency to create conflict.
"What?!" you cry. "Blessings in conflict?! Are you crazy?!"
Crazy, no. Blessings, yes. If "all is Love," (as the New Agers tell me and as my heart informs me) then conflict must be Love, too. Whether I'm aware of it or not, conflict serves me. When I say it serves me, I mean it helps me along my path of Healing-along the path to U-Love. Let me see how…
The first thing to note is that C-love-everyday emotional life-has the tendency to create conflict. The main reason for this has already been discussed:
· Every emotion (or thought) has an opposite.
Every emotion I can feel, every thought I can think, every idea, view, opinion, stance or belief I might embrace has an opposite-for example: happy and sad, like and dislike, anger and calm, suspiciousness and trust, certainty and doubt, and so on. Each emotion (or thought) is naturally in conflict with its opposite. Not only this, but:
· Every emotion (or thought) is defined by its opposite.
For example, "happy" is an emotional state without sadness and "sad" is an emotional state without happiness. "Like" is an emotional state without dislike and "dislike" is an emotional state without "like." Sure, I might like certain things about you while disliking others, but the things I like about you I don't dislike as well, if that makes sense.
In addition to this:
· An emotion (or thought) cannot exist without its opposite.
Emotions (and thoughts) come in pairs. If I think of any emotion (or thought), I can find an opposite for it.
In all this lie the seeds of conflict. Why? Because, at any moment, my happiness might be challenged by sadness, my like might be overpowered by dislikes, my thoughts might be confronted by opposing thoughts, my ideas and beliefs might be attacked by opposing ideas and beliefs, and so on. The things that challenge, confront, overpower, oppose, or attack my one-sided emotions and thoughts may come from inside me or they may come from outside me (as we'll see in what follows).
Personas and Personality
For the sake of simplicity and clarity, let's define two words: persona and personality.
Firstly, I've talked about emotions and thoughts in the same breath in many of the things I've discussed so far. Aren't emotions and thoughts different things, though? Yes and no.
· Emotions and thoughts are two aspects of the same thing.
If I look closely at what goes on inside me, I will see that every thought is associated with an emotion and every emotion is associated with a thought. The thought side might be a lot stronger than the emotion side-like when I simply think about a tree. (Unless I have some reason to be angry at a tree!) Or the emotion side might be a lot stronger than the thought side-like when I feel 'blind' rage.
However, there is an emotional response even to the thought of a tree and there is a thought lying behind my 'blind' rage. The two sides-emotions and thoughts-can't be separated (despite what Star Trek's Mr. Spock would like to believe!)
So, for all practical purposes, emotions and thoughts are two aspects of the same thing. This goes for all my judgments, ideas, views, opinions, stances and beliefs, too. Every one of these things is a different aspect of the same thing. What is that thing? In short, each one of these things is a unit of consciousness. Let's call a unit of consciousness a persona.
· Every emotion, thought, judgment, idea, view, opinion, stance, and belief I have is a persona.
· A persona is the most basic unit of consciousness.
Put simply, every time I express an emotion, thought, judgment, idea, view, opinion, stance or belief, it's as if I'm putting on a different hat, holding up a different banner or wearing a different armband. I'm taking on a different persona.
If this is so, then I'm made up of as many personas as I have emotions, thoughts, judgments, ideas, views, opinions, stances, and beliefs. That's a lot of personas! Let's call my collection of personas my personality.
· Personality is my entire collection of personas.
The most important thing to realize is that my personas are constantly changing. I am not the same person from one minute to the next, despite what's commonly thought. My collection of personas-my personality-holds many contradictions that flicker in and out, minute by minute, day by day and year by year, as we'll see.
Armed with these two words-persona and personality-let's continue seeing how conflict arises and how it serves my Healing journey to U-Love.
Now I'm Happy, Now I'm Sad
My personas-my emotions, thoughts, judgments, ideas, opinions, views, beliefs and stances-tend to tick-tock between negatives and positives in cycles that can be seconds, minutes, hours, days or even years. For example, in this hour, I'm angry with you for something you said to me; in the next hour, I'll feel more friendly toward you, having perhaps forgiven your rudeness. Today, I'm more or less happy, having just received my paycheck; tomorrow, I may be more or less unhappy after paying my bills. Today, I dislike my job; next month, I may like it better. Today, I love my new wife, because she's the most wonderful person I've ever met; in ten years, I might consider divorcing her, because I now 'know her better'. When I was in my late teens, socialism looked like the only fair answer to the world's problems; in my early forties, I see and feel things differently. When I was a child, I hated my life; at age twenty-eight, I wasn't sure if I liked it or not; at age forty-four, I Love my life.
Whether my tick-tocks are shorter or longer, simpler or more complex, my personas generally lean toward one side or the other of a duality. Put another way, my personas are generally polarized. Not only this, but my personas tend to tick-tock periodically from one side to the other, constantly reacting to my life experiences.
My tick-tocks may be long enough that I don't notice the gradual swings from one side to the other. In this case, I don't see any conflict. The opposing side appears to be gone-or, at least, overpowered. At any given moment, I insist that such-and-such is my view, my feeling, my ideology, my belief, my opinion or my stance. In this moment, for all practical purposes, I am this persona. And, in this moment, I call this persona "I." In this moment, I believe I am this or that… I truly believe I am this persona. I wear the hat, hold up the banner, and wear the armband. And, most importantly, in this moment, I ignore, fail to acknowledge, deny, or disown any opposites.
Even when the swings are swift-measured in terms of seconds, hours or days-the persona wearing the hat at any given moment will tend to speak as though it were the whole of me. My current persona does not notice or remember that, a moment ago, a different and possibly contradictory persona was wearing the hat of my consciousness. My personas 'hold court' in my consciousness, one at a time, each thinking it is the only and most important one.
For example, I sit at a dinner party and one part of me (persona) spouts on about how something should be done about the starving people in our big cities. (Meanwhile, I'm eating a meal that's way more than I physically need.) The following morning, as I walk to work, I brush past a begging bum in the street and another part of me (another persona) thinks, "Get a job!"
Another example: Before I go to bed at night, a part of me (persona) makes a plan to get up early and go for a run. In the morning, another part of me (another persona) 'decides' it wants to have nothing to do with getting up early, much less with running.
Another example: On Friday, one part of me (persona) agrees to play ball with my son over the weekend. The weekend comes and another part of me (another persona) has too much work to do and forgets about playing ball.
The Two Sides of Me
As I've explored, every persona-emotion, thought, judgment, idea, view, opinion, stance, or belief-has an opposite. Personas come in pairs, but I generally only experience and see one side at a time. One side is expressed and visible and the other side is repressed and hidden. Why do I experience and express one side of a persona pair at a time? Why do I experience sadness while not experiencing happiness? Or happiness without sadness? I admit that sometimes I do experience a mixture of both, but, generally, one side is stronger than the other. In any given moment, one side is dominant and the other is recessive.
What am I to make of all this? Where does this behavior of my personas come from? Why do personas lean toward one side or the other? Why don't they remain balanced between the two opposites? Why don't they include both sides at once?
I'll leave these questions aside for a moment and come back to them a little later.
Now, what does all this have to do with conflict? My personas make up a changing landscape inside me. Sometimes, that landscape seems more permanent. Sometimes it changes frequently, depending on the experiences of my life and how I react to these experiences. In one moment, I believe a certain thing, but in the next moment, I may believe something quite different. Mostly, I don't notice these changing hats. From some strange reason, I don't notice my swinging emotions, changing opinions, inner contradictions, and 'about faces'. Neither do I want to notice them! Not only this, but I certainly don't want others to notice or, God forbid, point these things out to me!
Sometimes, though, I do notice (or others notice) these two opposite sides in me-the two opposing sides of my persona pairs, swinging from one side to the other. For example, I might be happy that my child's going off to college. However, I might also be sad because it means they'll be living away from home now. These opposite emotions create conflict within me. (If I were to balance out all the things that made me sad about the situation and all the things that made me happy, "happy" and "sad" would disappear, merging into a new experience-the experience of U-Love-as we'll see in what follows.)
Conflicts such as this (that I notice or others notice) are what I call my issues-my questions, problems, dilemmas, Wounds, obstacles, blockages, and so on. These are the things that cause me to have to stop and think-that ruffle my feathers, so to speak, and interrupt my otherwise peaceful life. Where does the conflict come from, though? Surely, if, as I've explored, one side of each of my persona pairs dominates my consciousness at any given moment (wears the hat), then everything should remain peaceful… shouldn't it?
The Missing Pieces of Me
I'd be quite content expressing one side of things (my views, opinions, beliefs, and so on) while ignoring the other side if it weren't for two things: 1) I'm constantly receiving fresh experiences through my senses and 2) I'm being constantly challenged by social interaction. The experiences of my life continually 'prod' and 'poke' me. This prodding and poking is mirrored by constant inner processes (emotional and mental) that try to bring order, sense and meaning to my experiences of the world and my experiences of myself. If I lived in isolation from the world-away from people, animals, vegetation, the elements and the environment-there wouldn't be any more 'prodding' and 'poking'. There'd be nothing to challenge my expressed personas. I could stand up on my soapbox and declare that the moon was made of green cheese and no one would challenge me! My expressed personas would remain expressed and my repressed personas would remain repressed. Dominants would remain dominant; recessives would remain recessive.
Sorry to spoil the fantasy… I don't live in such a world. My personality is a combination of what I bring into life (nature) and what life gives me (nurture, i.e. sensory and social 'prodding' and 'poking'). Life itself won't let me get away with my one-sided fantasy.
This being so, at any moment, the experiences of my life-for the most part, my interactions with other people (socialization)-may either support or challenge my expressed personas. Put simply, other people might agree with me that the moon is made of green cheese or they might object and challenge me to prove it. Here's the basis of conflict.
Something in me knows that the moon is not made of green cheese, but I ignore or repress this part while I'm up on my soapbox. Taking a real example now, let's suppose I'm expressing sadness about some issue while ignoring or repressing happiness. What happens? People gather around me and try to 'cheer me up.' In a sense, they're challenging my stance that says there's nothing to be happy about. Or let's say I'm adamant that abortion is a good thing and I say this loudly. At the moment I say this, I'm ignoring or repressing all the reasons why abortion might be a bad thing. And somebody is bound to point this out to me! I can't get away with my one-sided viewpoints. Even more interesting than this is the fact that if were to insist that abortion is a bad thing (expressed persona), someone is bound to challenge me on this, too, pointing out all the good things about it. I can't get away with half-truths. Life constantly challenges me to see both sides of things.
This brings me to some important points:
· When people challenge me, they're mirroring the parts of me that I'm ignoring or repressing (my repressed personas).
· Challenges and conflict mirror the missing pieces of my life-the missing pieces of me.
· Challenges and conflict give me the opportunity to see and embrace my repressed, hidden, recessive, denied, and disowned personas.
· In this way, challenges and conflict give me the opportunity to experience U-Love.
If I see the world a certain way, there's bound to be someone else who's going to see it the opposite way. If I hold a certain belief about something, someone out there holds the opposite belief. If I see only negatives in a situation, there's bound to be someone who will see the positives. If I'm in pain, there's bound to be someone out there who can see the benefits, blessings, lessons, Gifts and Service of my pain. If I'm down, someone will try to pick me up. If I am full of myself, someone will try to bring me down. If look carefully, I might be able to see that life is always showing me the other sides-the balancing sides-of things. The fact that I don't see it most of the time is because I live in the world of C-love. The key to moving from C-love to U-Love is seeing both sides of things equally and simultaneously.
Continue -> |
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Martin Lass,
Astrologer
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Martin Lass
Professional Practising and Research Astrologer
Research Member of AFA (American Federation of Astrologers)
Member of ISAR (International Society for Astrological Research)
Certified practitioner of "The Collapse Process"(TM) of Dr. John Demartini (The Concourse of Wisdom School of Philosophy and Healing, Houston TX).
Martin Lass specializes in Chiron Astrology--the astrology of Healing--as well as actively researching the origins of astrology and astrology's wider metaphysical connections to every possible area of human endeavor and expression.
He writes for various trade journals, has authored numerous books (see below) and presents lectures/seminars/workshops worldwide on a variety of topics from astrology to healing to the connections between mythology, physics and metaphysics, to name a few.
Author of the three-volume book series, "Musings of a Rogue Comet - Chiron, Planet of Healing" and of "Love Makes the Worlds Go Around - The Living Planets Speak"
See:
www.martinlass.
com/chbk123.htm
Author of spiritually-based fiction and poetry
Professional musician (violinist), composer and entertainer
Book designer for Print-on-Demand (POD) printing process (primarily for self-publishers - e-books and trade paperbacks)
websites:
www.martinlass.
com/astrohome.htm
(astrology and healing site)
www.martinlass.
com
(music site)
www.galactic
publications.
com
(PDF book design site)
email:
MartinLass7@aol.com
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