We Will Survive: The Blog -- From the authors of SURVIVING SATURN'S RETURN
Astro-commentary, Saturn Return survival tips, and meandering miscellany from the Saturn Sisters, authors of SURVIVING SATURN'S RETURN
Why We Need Saturn Now
"Saturn lifts you up like a child or drags you down like a stone.
Consumes you until you choose to let this go."
Maynard James Keenan, Tool
We need Saturn now because we are running out of time. The phrase "Time is of the essence" is no longer a cliche, but a burning truth ticking like a clock as we endure tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes and a war that never ends. On 9/11 we all truly understood the spiritual teaching that says there is nothing real but the moment before us. But a few months after 9/11 we forgot. It takes world-shattering events such as these to mark time, wake us up out of our dull slumber and to pin-point exactly how we are doing in our space/time continuum. Without such crisis, would we truly stop and look around to see exactly where we are? How do we fare when the rug (or the plug) is pulled out from under us? What truly supports us when external saviors are removed?
No longer able to worship at the altars of our computers, cell phones or palm pilots to keep us connected, suddenly we are in the dark. We have to feel our way home with night vision, through community, through cooperation and through candlelight. Saturn wants us back to the real, in our bones, facing our lessons not endlessly distracted by technology. Saturn rules time, form, and structure. We have become totally estranged from the consequences to our actions, from our values, our priorities. Collectively we are out of alignment with nature. Many of us have traded in our time for reflection and contemplation for shopping, eating, wolfing down food followed by television or internet worship. Even our best attempts at self-medication cannot us hide the fact that we are all craving a feeling of really being alive, truly living by our own rules and standards. If Saturn represents the rules we choose to live by, the karmic game rules, then we have to look at what we are saying yes to and what we are saying no to. Are we consciously choosing or just being led by greed, laziness, ignorance or complacency? Are we in the moment, in our bodies, in our relationships? Is anybody home? Do our worldly attachments serve us? Or do we serve them?
The World
"Like a bird on the branch of a tree that could break at any moment . . . we must be ready to let go of our attachments at a moment's notice and fly."
Ammachi
What is this great attachment to the world? What are we really up to? What if we do get the best jobs, best bodies, highest acclaim, biggest diamond, marriage, family, kids and the three-car garage? Is that what life is all about? We are letting this world put us on over-drive, yet do we like the structures we are creating? At the end of the day, what really gives us meaning and fulfillment? We need Saturn to remind us that if try to skim over our weaknesses or simply blame others for our shortcomings, the enemy will always reside "out there" someplace and the world will not be a friendly place. We will feel that life, the world, even Saturn is out to punish us. We can only fail ourselves, cheat ourselves, and ultimately forgive ourselves in the end.
Saturn is our great teacher because if there were no limits, no deadlines, no ending point, no consequences — who would endeavor to get out of bed in the morning? What would be the point? It seems that more than ever we need to feel that time is not endless and so there is no time to waste. We cannot put off the priorities of the heart any longer, because time and the world as we have known it are not a given and can change on a dime. There is a major price to pay for procrastination (Saturn's pet peeve); and that is our very lives.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or the music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.
Here the impossible union.
T.S. Eliot, "The Dry Salvages"
