Complete and full devotion

Complete and full devotion

The Sun just entered Gemini, which marks something of a milestone for me.

This begins my second year of blogging around the zodiac using the I Ching in a devotional way as a sort of lectionary, with a dash of depth psychology quotes.

A little bit eclectic, which is how my Gemini self likes it.

It was a year ago that I decided to do weekly blog posts like this. I’m excited to continue.

Today the Sun is still in hexagram 8: Holding Together, which I wrote about last time during the final week of Taurus season.

Now it is in line 6 of this hexagram (each hexagram has six lines), which adds additional nuance.

The sixth line is the top of the hexagram. In Hexagram 8 it reminds us:

The head is in the beginning. If the beginning is not right, there is no hope of a right ending. If we have missed the right moment for union and go on hesitating to give complete and full devotion, we shall regret the error when it is too late.

The I Ching by Richard Wilhelm

Gemini is a mutable air sign ruled by Mercury. The upside to its mutability is adaptability. The downside is the hesitation to give complete and full devotion.

The Mercury of Gemini is curious and loves to explore areas others do not. It can get bored quickly and move on. But us Gemini types need to remember that complete and full devotion, a Jupiterian quality, is sometimes warranted.

Even if you don’t have Gemini planets in your natal chart, the area of life Gemini represents for you is now lit up by the Sun and other planets will be zipping through in the coming weeks.

Here are a few things to ponder during Gemini season in light of Hexagram 8, line 6:

Reflect on a recent experience where you hesitated to fully commit or devote yourself. How did this hesitation impact the outcome?

Explore a time when your curiosity led you to explore new territories or ideas. How did this curiosity manifest, and what did you learn from the experience?

Consider the areas of your life currently illuminated by the Sun’s transit through Gemini. How can you harness the adaptability of this mutable air sign to navigate any changes or challenges you may encounter?

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Leaders as cultural therapists

Leaders as cultural therapists

For insights on leadership, I often turn to the ancient Chinese book Tao Te Ching.

In measuring out rewards, wise rulers act like mother birds. While seeing into every corner, they are unobtrusive. While protecting the people, they do not control them. They are motherly and fatherly, but not domineering. They persuade with words, not weapons. This is their crowning virtue.

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

What passes for leadership these days tends to not resemble this more introverted, intuitive, and feeling approach at all.

As John Beebe has said, our culture is imbalanced, with a heavy emphasis on extraverted thinking, extraverted sensation, and extraverted intuition.

This brings us to our hexagram host for this final week of Taurus: Hexagram 8: Holding Together.

The unity described in this hexagram, per Wilhelm’s translation, “calls for a central figure around whom other persons may unite…It requires greatness of spirit, consistency, and strength.”

Jennifer Leigh Selig’s book about Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., written from a depth psychology perspective, emphasizes how leaders should engage in “cultural therapy”:

I also hope that others will take up this notion of “cultural therapy,” of looking at our leaders and activists as cultural therapists, and will consider ways they can work with more psychological effectiveness and effectiveness toward cultural healing, transformation, and integration. The keys to the kingdom of psychological transformation needn’t lie only in the inner chamber of the therapy room; they have the power to unlock groups, cultures, even nations, and unleash healing en masse.

Integration by Jennifer Leigh Selig

Sagely Jupiter in Taurus will experience a rebirth moment this week as it conjoins the Sun and begins a new one-year cycle. This comes in the wake of Jupiter’s recent conjunction with Uranus

Therefore this “power to unlock” is there for all of us to tune into.

With Jupiter in Taurus experiencing a rebirth moment, reflect on a personal or professional goal where you can embody the qualities of “greatness of spirit, consistency, and strength” described in Hexagram 8: Holding Together.

How might you become a central figure around whom others can unite, fostering unity and resilience in pursuit of shared objectives?

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Continue ReadingLeaders as cultural therapists

New seed in the empty places

New seed in the empty places

Some problems can’t be solved; you simply have to wait until you outgrow them.

That Jungian theme came to mind as I read Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart of the I Ching, our hexagram host for this next week of Taurus.

The image is of a mountain on top of the earth. Just as a mountain experiences continuous erosion, the old ways of living must be stripped away.

It’s not good, at such times, to imagine the future and make plans. You need to bring your energy back to the centre and honour the process: this is a time to be transformed, not to act.

Moreover, until the old is so utterly stripped from you that you have no choice but to think in new ways, you will only be able to re-create the old patterns.

I Ching: Walking Your Path, Creating Your Future by Hilary Barrett

In the book The Faithful Gardener by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, which is perfect reading for Taurus season, she describes a time during her childhood when the local government stripped their land bare to build a highway near their property.

It was heartbreaking to lose all the trees and plants. Estés’ uncle instructed the family to leave the land bare and unseeded, as this is the best way to attract seeds of new life. The seeds would know how to find the bare, scorched earth.

Sure enough, the seeds arrived, and a small forest of hardwood trees grew over a long period of time. To Estés and her uncle they felt like they were in Eden.

I learned from my dear people as much about the grave, about facing the demons, and about rebirth as I have learned in all my psychoanalytic training and all my twenty-five years of clinical practice. I know that those who are in some ways and for some time shorn of belief in life itself—that they ultimately are the ones who will come to know best that Eden lies underneath the empty field, that the new seed goes first to the empty and open places—even when the open place is a grieving heart, a tortured mind, or a devasted spirit.

The Faithful Gardener by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

An important insight to ponder in the wake of the recent New Moon in Taurus.

Everything that is built up – power, or achievement, or the edifice of self and identity – must continually erode away. It leaves behind an enriched inner world, and a quiet sense of being at home here.

I Ching: Walking Your Path, Creating Your Future by Hilary Barrett

What is eroding away in your life?

How is your inner life being enriched as a result?

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8 Things I Learned from John Beebe in 8 Hours

8 Things I Learned from John Beebe in 8 Hours

I had the honor of attending eight hours of virtual instruction from John Beebe about psychological types.

This was part of the training for the Jungian Studies Program at the Jung Institute of Chicago.

I have written many posts about Beebe’s work over the years to help me understand it better, so it was a thrill to hear directly from Beebe himself and be able to ask him some questions.

Here are eight things I learned:

  1. Jung’s typology is practical and pragmatic. Sensation names what is, Feeling determines it worth, Intuition shows where it is going, and Thinking figures out what it means.
  2. Most of us have an aspirational type. Even Jung himself! Jung wanted to believe he was an introverted thinking type (INTP). But per Beebe he was an INTJ, which is why Jung was able to explain his material so that Americans in particular could understand it.
  3. Jung’s psychology is a psychology of the person in the psyche, not just defenses and syndromes. Beebe’s term for this is “personology.” It shows us how the person self-organizes. This is also known as “complexity theory,” which explains how the complexes we have tend to group together and self-organize. Beebe’s 8 function model is based on this. As he said, “We are never more than a complexity out of which consciousness is slowly emerging.”
  4. Jung’s psychology is a self-psychology, not an ego psychology. Beebe considers Jung a precursor to self-psychology. Self-psychology bolsters the self, with an emphasis on mirroring and empathy.
  5. The USA is an extraverted thinking (ESTJ) country. In fact, its four functions are Extraverted Thinking (Te), Extraverted Sensation (Se), extraverted intuition (Ne), and Introverted Feeling (Fi). This is a very imbalanced type, with three extraverted functions and inferior feeling. A normal function stack alternates between two introverted and two extraverted functions.
  6. Dreams are more like analogies than metaphors. When Beebe writes down a dream, he prefaces it with the words “It is exactly as if…” An analogy is in exact proportion to something. A metaphor is an exaggeration for the sake of emphasis (example: “My love is like a red red rose”). Dreams also tend to reflect our type and sometimes even a better or more enhanced version of it.
  7. Our type should not be viewed as “This is who I am!” Beebe said the hexagrams of the I Ching show that there are types of situations, rather than fixed types of people. Therefore our type is more fluid and situational. This was in response to my question to him about how the eight trigrams compare to the eight functions. In discussing this point with my analyst, who also has expertise in the I Ching, he said that the hexagrams we receive when asking a question would take our type into account. By the way, Beebe said he is working on a book about the hexagrams! I can’t wait.
  8. Typology has a value for sorting out self-experience. Beebe showed us several movie clips from Broadcast News (an ESTJ movie) and The Grifter (an ISFJ movie). Developing an eye for spotting the type of a movie, and the types of the characters in a movie, is a good practice for helping us sort out our own self-experiences using type.

If you are interested in learning more about typology, and Beebe’s work in particular, I’ll list some books below:

If you are new to typology, I recommend Personality Types: Jung’s Model of Typology by Daryl Sharp. In just over 100 pages he summarizes typology in a concise way that is easy to understand.

Building Blocks of Personality Type by Leona Haas and Mark Hunziker is an excellent introduction to Beebe’s 8 function model.

Lectures on Jung’s Typology by Marie-Louise von Franz and James Hillman is essential. It is one of the first type books I read. With its focus on the inferior function, it will help you identify your type if you currently are unsure about your type. Hillman’s essay on the feeling function is brilliant.

Once you have these basics down and understand the four main functions of the function stack, then it will be easier to understand Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type by John Beebe. Pair this book with Projection and Personality Development via the Eight-Function Model by Carol Shumate to complete your understanding of the model. Shumate’s book is superb and breaks everything down in a way that is easy to understand. Any lingering questions you have after reading Beebe’s book will be answered by Shumate’s.

Feel free to contact me if you want more book recommendations or have any questions.

Continue Reading8 Things I Learned from John Beebe in 8 Hours

Transformation by doing nothing

Transformation by doing nothing

It couldn’t possibly get more earthy and Taurus-y than Hexagram 2: Earth (The Receptive), our hexagram host for this next week.

The opposite of Hexagram 2 is Hexagram 1: The Creative, directly across the zodiacal wheel from Taurus in Scorpio. Both work as partners in creation. Hexagram 2 describes Earth’s role, with its receptivity being a form of strength:

Through the power of the land, Earth is heaven’s partner in bringing the world into being. The sun needs a place to shine, rain a place to fall, and seeds need soil to grow in; flashes of inspiration need space and time to expand and take shape; great ideas need work to be realized.

The power of the land is to provide everything needed for all things to find their shape. A noble one embodies this power in the deep generosity of her character. She certainly need never worry about the limits of her strength.

I Ching: Walking Your Path, Creating Your Future by Hilary Barrett

With the New Moon in Taurus next week, alongside Venus and Jupiter in Taurus, you should start feeling that needed space and time opening up, along with a sense of groundedness and connection to the natural world.

To be receptive is to surrender and become more oriented:

The more we surrender to everything, to every moment as perfect, the more oriented we become. The more we drop our agendas, our trying, our incessant concerns about our lives and those around us, the more we radiate the presence inside us. Then the magic occurs. Our aura, our vibration, animates our environment. It opens up the currents of the quantum field; it catalyses transformation. We become a force of orientation for all life forms. Simply by doing nothing we become a field of transformational forces.

The 64 Ways by Richard Rudd

Transformation by doing nothing! Isn’t that nice to ponder instead of all the emphasis out there on productivity?

When I meet with astrology clients, I try to serve as an orienteer. I emphasize attuning ourselves to the present energies indicated in the chart.

Nothing is broken. There is no to-do list and nothing that needs fixing.

To orient another person correctly, and I mean truly correctly, is to not give them advice. Advice we can get anywhere. To orient someone is to love them. It’s to be with them. It’s to be ourself with them. It’s to let them see our weakness s well as our strength. It’s to be empty like water, and yet to be full. It’s to be intuitive, to trust, to soften, to yield, to flow. People don’t need help. People need love.

The 64 Ways by Richard Rudd

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A moment to be still and turn inward

A moment to be still and turn inward

Isn’t it nice to have cosmic permission to pause during this busy zodiacal spring and return to one’s center?

After that Aries eclipse and Jupiter-Uranus conjunction, whew, I’m ready for some rest!

Hexagram 24: Return (The Turning Point) from the I Ching describes how our journey has turning points along the way:

By walking constantly to and from your source, you participate in a two-way flow of creation. You go out and rediscover your own way; you return through an open door to your home and relationships. This is a living motion, like breathing, that revitalizes and restores. Relaxed and spacious, it allows time for the path’s natural meanderings, never creating resistance.

I Ching: Walking Your Path, Creating Your Future by Hilary Barrett

I also like its description of how ancient kings cared for their people “as the earth covers a dormant seed. They contained people’s impulse to rush out and resume business as usual, so that the energy for growth would not be squandered…”

This ties in very well with Taurus season. Taurus is a feminine earth associated with stability and determination.

Taurus provides a turning point for setting practical goals and recommitting to them. Like steady Taurus, Hexagram 24 suggests a return to what is essential and reliable, emphasizing patience and persistence in achieving long-term objectives:

“This is the turning point on your path, a moment to be still and turn inward to listen for little glimmerings and inklings of awareness, to nurture the seeds of a personal sense of direction.”

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Continue ReadingA moment to be still and turn inward

You are known by your nourishment

You are known by your nourishment

The words you speak are like food – they go out into the collective stream and nourish others.

You draw nourishment from this same stream and therefore need to be discriminating about what you ingest.

Hexagram 27 of the I Ching, The Corners of the Mouth (Providing Nourishment) is our hexagram host for this next week of Taurus.

Taurus, a feminine earth sign ruled by Venus, is closely aligned with food and nourishment. The Empress is the tarot card associated with Taurus (note the Venus symbol to the left of her chair). See how she reclines and is not in a hurry. She looks ready to receive and provide nourishment in a discerning way.

The nourishment of this hexagram is more than just food. It includes physical, intellectual, spiritual, social, and more.

Even your shadow is a form of nourishment. Robert Bly wrote about how we should “eat” our shadows:

So the person who has eaten his shadow spreads calmness, and shows more grief than anger. If the ancients were right that darkness contains intelligence and nourishment and even information, then the person who has eaten some of his or her shadow is more energetic as well as more intelligent.

A Little Book of the Human Shadow by Robert Bly

The nourishment you both provide and take in also speaks to your character:

If we wish to know what anyone is like, we have only to observe on whom he bestows his care and what sides of his own nature he cultivates and nourishes.

The I Ching or Book of Changes translated by Richard Wilhelm

Your tranquillity depends on it:

For tranquillity keeps the words that come out of the mouth from exceeding proper measure, and keeps the food that goes into the mouth from exceeding its proper measure, and keeps the food that goes into the mouth from exceeding its proper measure. Thus character is cultivated.

The I Ching or Book of Changes translated by Richard Wilhelm

This coming week is a suitable time to find some Empress moments and reflect, especially as we are winding down these last few days of Mercury retrograde in Aries:

What nourishment are you hungry for?

If you take in this nourishment, which sides of your nature will it cultivate and nourish?

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Difficulty at the beginning

Difficulty at the beginning

Difficulty at the beginning of things is something we are not always encouraged to embrace.

The Sun just entered Taurus and Hexagram 3: Difficulty at the beginning from the I Ching is our hexagram host for this next week.

That is appropriate, as Taurus, a feminine, fixed, Venusian earth sign can have a tough time getting started with things, unlike Aries.

To push past difficulty at the beginning I suppose I could talk about things like the “five-minute rule,” mentioned in the book Feel Good Productivity. It recommends selecting a task you have been postponing and give it your full attention for just five minutes. Then stop and decide if you need a break or are now in the flow enough to continue.

Or if five minutes is too long, we could talk about Mel Robbins’ Five Second Rule. Not surprisingly, her Moon sign is Aries: “From the moment that you have the idea, you’ve only got five seconds to take action, otherwise it’s gone. Write it down, schedule it, send an email to yourself or make the request.”

Or I could recommend Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art and all the antidotes he provides in it for dealing with Resistance.

Mercury and Venus are still in Aries, so you may find greater ease in overcoming difficulty at the beginning of things, even as we begin Taurus season.

But I would rather talk about my favorite children’s book, Ferdinand the Bull. Here is a Reel I made about the book three years ago. The bull is the symbol for Taurus and this book captures the essence of Taurus well.

Taurus season is a time for us to seek our safe space, just like Ferdinand does:

In bullfighting the safe place is called the querencia. For humans the querencia is a place in our inner world. Often it is a familiar place that has not been noticed until a time of crisis. Sometimes it is a viewpoint, a position from which to conduct a life, different for each person. Often it is simply a place of deep inner silence.

Kitchen Table Wisdom by Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.

It is from this center that growth begins. As the I Ching says, “Times of growth are beset with difficulties. They resemble a first birth. But these difficulties arise from the very profusion of all that is struggling to attain form. Everything is in motion: therefore if one perseveres there is a prospect of great success…”

Continue ReadingDifficulty at the beginning

It’s OK to take up space

It’s OK to take up space

While watching the eclipse yesterday, Air Force One flew overhead at the exact moment of the eclipse in Icarus-type fashion. It had just taken off from the airport after the President made a brief stop here.

It seems a fitting correlation to this week’s Hexagram 42: Increase of the I Ching an appropriate for Aries.

Just like Aries, the hexagram is about purpose, movement, and having a direction to go.

As Hilary Barrett says in her translation:

Increase simply flows, without limit; there is no need for restrictive frameworks to contain it. When you are blessed, it is good to respond with purpose and movement: participating in the increase, pouring more in, you receive more in return. Let yourself imagine where you want to be, and take the first steps that commit you to going there. This is how to keep the momentum.

I Ching: Walking Your Path, Creating Your Future by Hilary Barrett

The image of the hexagram shows a marriage of heaven and earth, with the earth being able to partake of the power of the heavens.

This reminds me how Jungian analyst and author James Hollis frequently reminds us to ask ourselves if a choice is diminishing us or not:

Then we look at our daily choices; some of them small, some of them are very large, and we ask: Does this choice make me smaller? Or does it make me larger? Does it enlarge me psychologically? Or is it diminishing me?

Life of Meaning by James Hollis

I like to think of the increase in this hexagram as being about NOT making ourselves smaller.

Or in other words, it’s OK to take up space.

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Continue ReadingIt’s OK to take up space

A still point in the thunder

A still point in the thunder

We have double the thunder this week … just in time for Monday’s eclipse in Aries!

With the snow (!) and winter-like winds we are having here in Wisconsin in April, I wouldn’t mind some thunder and spring showers.

Hexagram 51: The Arousing (shock, thunder) of the I Ching is thunder repeated. It describes a leader who is composed and reverent even though the thunder spreads terror 100 miles around:

This doesn’t necessarily mean resisting the shock itself, so much as keeping a still point in the midst of the tumult of reactions to it. Then you never lose your connection with the creative power that speaks through the storms. … Consider what remains constant and true when everything else is in turmoil.

Hilary Barrett, I Ching: Walking Your Path, Creating Your Future

Events like eclipses can cause shock and fear, especially if they impact one’s astrology chart in a powerful way.

While this eclipse is going on we also have Mars and Saturn in Pisces and Uranus and Jupiter pairing up in Taurus.

Once again both the I Ching and astrology remind us that we must get over certainty and wanting to always be in control.

Whenever I feel anxious about an astrological transit, I remind myself of one of my favorite James Hollis quotes:

Anxiety will be our companion if we risk the next stage of our journey, and depression our companion if we do not. …Faced with such a choice, choose anxiety and ambiguity, for they are developmental, always, while depression is regressive. Anxiety is an elixir, and depression a sedative. The former keeps us on the edge of our life, and the latter in the sleep of childhood.

James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life

Even with that reminder, part of me wants to be a recluse during this eclipse. But I have places to go and things to do. It is heartening to know that even the noble one described in Hexagram 51 was initially a little rattled:

When the outer world is shaken up, the noble one is also inwardly shaken. He is wide awake now, quivering with awareness of the changes underway, and ready to take on responsibility for restoring life to harmony.

Hilary Barrett, I Ching: Walking Your Path, Creating Your Future

Where do you need to restore harmony in your life right now?

What must change?

What will continue?

Continue ReadingA still point in the thunder