IDEALISM & REALISM

One of the things which astrologers are up against is unbridled idealism. We are expected by some to tamper with the mediocre and make the mundane more tolerable by way of fantastic information or potential future scenario.

Even in today’s cynical and jaded world, the need for idealistic lifescape has not disappeared from the agenda of human need. Probably, if anything, it has mushroomed. The worse things get, the more there is the need to escape and build away from harsh reality, either personally or collectively. A need to create an impregnable refuge, which could be the bolt-hole for a spiritual search - or it could be the beginning of an impenetrable barricade towards the preservation of self.

Taking the area of personal and close relationship, the hunger is at its most insatiable. Quick results, blissful states of perfection or unique interactive experiences are craved as a norm. Our mothers and fathers may have wished to be Doris Day and Cary Grant, but the irony is that many people still do. Faced with some of the more odious media archetypes of desire and romance they still hanker to be straightforward, optimistic, eminently loveable and starry eyed.

So much has the nostalgia boom (another form of idealism) got a grip, that a whole industry is creating itself in order to help fulfil this appetite within the burgeoning ‘interactive reality’ craze outside of the internet. Theme weekends, fantasy-type hotels, organisations which allow people to re-enact and relive their particular beloved period in time have been finding a business footing for the past 25 years. This brings us to a deeper and wider possibility - the one of atavism (the unconscious brush with past life experience). It is often difficult to sort out the idealism and the escapism from the more sacred and private surge towards karmic memory. Perhaps they are one and the same at times. But history is often distorted, and the past is often hallowed simply because it is passed.

There is now a glaring paradox in taste: an almost horrific need to see public annihilation and the need to find salvation from that. When its not footage of war its ‘reality t.v’ War documenting is perhaps the ultimate in ‘reality t.v’ but the lighter and more (supposed) entertaining ‘reality t.v’ sees the savagery enacting itself at an emotional or psychological level. Is it that our thirst for experience and insight is so great that our own life detail is often not enough? - we need another lens, an alternative window on which to view the world in other areas, around other people’s actions and developments!

But the urge to idealism is so endemic in human nature, and naturally very necessary, that it will triumph everytime. Is today’s idealism tomorrow’s realism? after all, what is heaven to one person will be hell to another!

If astrology is closely alined to alchemy, then it is now that we should see the greatest link from mind to transformation actually take place. At both a worldly and a personal level. Never has the need been so great for people to understand where their own power lies. The true power lies in the heart and mind; time to sit up and take notice, and then make real and informed choices beginning with self and self-motivation. If we make mistakes we can re-choose, Choice, like life, is not carved in tablets of stone. Democracy isn’t something granted by an electorate, its practised from day to day through instinct and action. Most of the ills of the world lie in the fact that people thought they did not have to bother, should not have to worry about things too big for them to understand - many were brought up that way and encouraged to abnegate power totally to someone or something else, usually something faceless and autonomous. But - like charity - it actually begins back home. It starts in the immediate consciousness.

There are people who still believe it wrong to be opinionated But Its perfectly okay. (opinionated is different than self-opinionated), as long as you grant the same option to others. Just as its okay to be judgmental. Without opinions and judgement there are no moral, personal or civil boundaries. Without opinion there would be no books written, no films produced, no diagnosis of any kind. Gossip and opinion are the cornerstones of connection (call it networking if you prefer). Opinion is the dynamic end of information. And information now is everywhere, we are drowning in it. Opinion and judgement are the navigational tool through turbulent waters.

Aspiration, inspiration and potential are things that the astrological sciences are all about. They are the work of the astrologer with the client. The ideals of the client are not something to be taken lightly, but the astrologer can work only with what is present, and then move through processes which require shifts and leaps. Now and then some stunning or amazing piece of fate arrives out of the blue, for good or for bad, and everyone is awed - even the astrologer. But mostly we are looking at patterns of cause and effect, and hidden motives and energies which are explicable and traceable. If you don’t aspire you don’t move. If you don’t dream you don’t really live. But if you aspire and dream and don’t accept the reality of what presently exists then you are not aware. Live in both worlds more. Live in the real and look at what could be real. Energy follows thought! There is a choice about everything, even thought, there is a consequence to everything, even thought.

Quoting Charles Haanel in his legendary book ‘The Master Key’ ... ‘whoever is concerned, whatever is concerned, you have only one patient and that is yourself!’

L.S.

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