New Moon
Solar Eclipse
September 11, 2007
18 Virgo 25′

When we had the pair of eclipses six months ago, I witnessed an exodus of employees from my workplace. They were going away angry. This reminded me of an exodus that had taken place in my life in a situation where I was a participant, not a witness. When was that? Let’s see . . . 1993. That was 14 years ago! Wow! Fourteen years is a Saturn cycle!

A Saturn cycle is a big deal to an astrologer. Image a cross in your mind and put Saturn at any one of the arms. It takes seven years to move from one arm to the next. This forms an angle of 90 degrees that we call a square. In another seven years, it is opposite the place it was fourteen years ago and in another seven years it will be square again from the other side, and at 28 years, it will return to the starting point.

The starting point could be your birth. This makes the ages of seven, fourteen, twenty-one, and twenty-eight, etc., significant turning points in a life. The starting point could also be any significant event of which Saturn is a part.

Saturn is called, The Teacher, and she is a teacher with a ruler. We get measured strictly by Saturn and sometimes the ruler turns into a metaphorical whipping stick as life deals with us in a seemingly harsh manner.

Even though I wasn’t directly involved in the drama unfolding before me, I was could see that there was a lesson for me because I had just turned 58 and was at the beginning of my second Saturn Cycle

To those who were leaving and those who were being left behind, I yearned to say,

“It’s inside of you. This drama that involves someone else as the problem is really inside of you. The extent to which this is a conflict is the extent to which your seeing apparatus—both your projector and your viewing screen—are in need of adjusting. You are not bad and they are not bad. You need each other to play the roles that you’ve dreamed up with the help of the Great Dream Weaver. And you are still dreaming moment by moment and day by day, week by week, and in some cases year by year.”

Some therapists counsel people who have recurring dreams to use their waking hours to change how they behave in the dream—for example, to stand and face the monster instead of running. This counsel works. You find yourself dreaming the dream and instead of running as you usually do, you turn, and this time you are surprised. Where you thought you would see a monster, you see a radiant, beautiful being.

A few years ago, I was angry with the same person with whom the people in my workplace were angry. I believed some of the marks in my employee evaluation were unfair. The drama started at a full moon, and I had full emotions of righteous indignation. But by then, I knew better than to target him, even though he seemed to be the perpetrator. I kept reminding myself, “This is about me. He’s just playing a part that he doesn’t even know he’s playing. What do I have to do about me? Do I need to remove myself or improve myself?” I was leaning strongly on the side of removing myself.

Lucky for me I was working with The Artist’s Way at Work by Catherine Allen, Mark Bryan, and Julia Cameron. Just as the conflict erupted I read a quote by Robert Kegan that I copied and posted: “Always frame conflict as a clash of ideas, not persons.” I would repeat this quote to myself whenever I had a surge of anger. I would visualize myself pulling the projected energy back toward myself as if I was pulling on a rope and would say, “This is not about him. This is about me.”

I was not prepared for the day when it dawned on me that he had had me pegged. He could see things about my performance that I could not see, because it was my intent to do my job well as a matter of personal pride. However, there was a part of me that was not fully committed. In my own mind, I was not where I truly belonged and was going to get out as soon as I could. My attitude showed in my performance.

Although this insight was surprising I embraced it. I worked on improving in the areas he had critiqued, and I found as the weeks and months went by that I enjoyed serving him and I enjoyed my job, especially with the innovations he was open enough to allow me to incorporate. Pretty soon as circumstances shifted, I found myself promoted and deeply committed.

Usually, where we would tend to blame others, we are blind to our own authorship of the circumstances.

As I write this the first time, I pause and sit up. My left hand is resting across my body on the table. My right hand, holding a pen poised in the upward crook of my thumb, is making a table with the fingers that my chin rests upon. I cannot see my body at all. When I let my eye move to the part of the window not covered by the shade, I see myself only vaguely in the window. It is dark outside and the lamp on my table, the only light on in the room, illumines my face in a softly lit shadow. Otto Scharmer says, “Reflection is the opposite of blame.”

If you do not have a reflecting surface, you cannot see your face. If we did not have other people reflecting us, we would have no idea of who we are or what we are like.

In the midst of conflict and misunderstanding, take time to reflect. Triangulate your position with the so-called perpetrator by bringing the Higher Self between you as the mediator that sees both of you as you really are and what you really need with one another. The Moon Key in Tarot is called the Uniting Intelligence. She always makes our dates for us, uniting us with both our friends and our so-called enemies. Keep reminding yourself of God’s presence, omniscience and might whenever you find yourself in the trenches of a drama.

Even if these words do not have meaning for you right now, please, take them from a fool who knows.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 8th, 2007 at 10:06 am and is filed under Lunations 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.