Navigating Life’s Crises Through Transpersonal Astrology
Fundamentally, the purpose of a crisis is to be a catalyst for change. If you are facing a challenging crisis, Transpersonal Astrology offers a unique approach that potentially will reorient your perspective about the true nature of what is happening and its underlying spiritual purpose.
If approached with this awareness and willingness to go through the crisis as it unfolds, it can be a vehicle for core transformation in your life wherein you become open to discover your true self and calling.
The Nature of a Crisis
Crises erupt in everyone’s life from time to time. They are part of the normal ebb and flow of existence. All kinds of crises in varying degrees of severity affect us directly, or indirectly through being involved with a person or group in crisis. External crises can be anything from experiencing a natural disaster to having an accident or serious health condition, a conflict in a relationship or difficulties at work. An internal crisis, or what is commonly known as an “existential crisis,” is a conflict within yourself about the very state of your life and nature of your existence. Existential crises can correlate to increased anxiety, depression, stress and despair, and are often related to experiencing a lack of direction, meaning and purpose in life.
Regardless of the nature of the crisis, common responses are an increase in negative emotional reactivity. You may experience amplified fear of what will happen, not being able to handle it, wanting to disengage from it entirely by leaving the scene or mentally escape through substance abuse or other distraction. As a person proceeds through a crisis, they may also be consumed by an unrelenting desire of just wanting it to be over and repeatedly asking when it will end.
Leveraging Astrology in the Process
Using Transpersonal Astrology as a tool to work consciously through a crisis, you will need to learn astrology and/or work with an astrologer. It begins by reviewing your birth chart and its dominant archetypal nature, which reveals on an abstract level your unique configuration of personality traits, motivations and needs. Relating the archetypes to your situation will help identify the patterns of behavior and thinking that may have led you to this moment. There may be a need to explore early childhood experiences that conditioned you to believe you needed to follow certain codes of behavior, beliefs or ways of being. This conditioning, also known as “programming,” is a function of your mind and ego, which absorbs – without question – the language, beliefs, behaviors and expectations of others in your immediate environment and your society at large as you grow up. It convinces you this is what is necessary to survive, to be accepted and to be loved.
Uncovering the Role of Programming
Living by societal and family programming leads to approaching life in ways that may be against your true nature and therefore correlate to internal conflicts of doubt, confusion, anxiety and other negative responses coming from unresolved fears that have the effect of limiting your choices in life. Over time, the choices you make lead you down a path you realize is not working for you or is not what you desired. When the conditions remain unaddressed and necessary changes are not made, you remain open and vulnerable to additional crises. It could take an extreme crisis before you finally decide to change course.
From a Transpersonal Astrology perspective, the nature of the crisis can also reveal the nature of changes that need to be considered. Reviewing the current transits (where the planets are now in relationship to the planets in the natal chart) will provide more information relating to the timing and purpose of the crisis. Major crises often relate to transits of the outer planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, which can affect not just an individual but an entire group or culture. The outer planets have transcendent qualities that open you to recognize mental programming and how it has limited the real choices available to you. This in turn leads to personal growth and self-discovery.
The overarching purpose of a crisis is to jolt you out of a static pattern of behavior. They can be a major reality check to pull you out of the dream of what you want your life to look like so you can see and accept it as it is in the present moment. If you are ready and willing, this new awareness, however painful, can open you to making a radical course correction. On another level, a crisis is also a calling to live for something greater than just yourself.
Embracing the Alchemic Heat of Crisis
Engaging with Transpersonal Astrology on a regular basis will help you understand yourself better, recognize and release programming that isn’t working for you, and begin to make choices that align with your soul. It is a tool that will guide you on how best to navigate the alchemic heat of a crisis and embrace it as a necessary pivotal moment for transformation that can lead to reduced internal fears, a deeper knowingness of who you are and where you belong. Your very way of perceiving can be irrevocably altered in a way that infuses your every choice thereafter with increased creativity, spontaneity and freedom, and brings greater meaning and purpose into your life. One way of describing it is the difference between surviving on a dysfunctional set of beliefs created by your mind and thriving in your purposeful, soul-directed life. Embracing a crisis in this way will put you on the path of living the life you were born for.