A Challenging Week Ahead: Getting Out From Under the Detrimental Weight of Things

Photo: Willow

We have a potentially challenging week ahead of us October 28 to November 3.

The Mars in Virgo opposition to stationing Chiron in Pisces (exact October 30) is dropping the fog in a big way. End-of-era listlessness, confusion, lack of direction, and "aren't we done yet?" are sitting on us, dragging at us, making the material world that much more difficult. Mars in earth sign Virgo is riding our asses on the details, but one more overlooked detail on our plates could push us over the edge. This is the material realm versus the metaphysical/unseen realm, and keeping the right balance is our goal and our challenge.

Chiron stationing in Pisces makes us want to throw our hands up and weep at the state of it all. This body in this sign in this direct station has a numbing effect, an anesthetizing effect. It tells us to just roll over, pull the covers over our heads, and go back to sleep. The crushing collective psychic pain wrapped up in this placement is tough under any circumstances, but at the end of the astrological Piscean era - where we are now - it can be downright miserable. Expect people to be spacey, easily confused, and easily discouraged this upcoming week. Sensitivities of all kinds are heightened, including to food, drink, and drugs.

Then on the other end of the polarity we have peppy, active drill sergeant Mars in Virgo barking, "Buck up, for God's sake! Get in the game. Show us some drive. How little heart can you possibly have that you're just going to weep and wallow and sigh and give up?" (The full Mars in Virgo post can be found here.)

Mars in Virgo wants us in tip-top shape. No screwing around with the usual Neptunian escapes: excessive junk food, sugar, drinking, drugging, TV, music, internet, shopping, daydreaming, sports, gambling, sex - whatever diverts our attention from the matters at hand.

We can utilize some of these Neptunian escapes in tight moderation and for limited times to ease our psychic and emotional suffering this week, but we have to maintain just the right medicinal doses to keep us balanced and sane.

No going overboard, and no crossing the line, though Chiron in Pisces has us wanting to slip away - far, far away - from it all.

No slipping!

We have some sucking it up to do this week, princesses.

And nothing helps one counteract the clinging, cloying depression and inertia of Chiron in Pisces like penetrating to the sources, to the roots, of all that collective psychic pain.

Mercury retrograde is on its way to a second conjunction to Saturn in Scorpio October 29. This adds to the potential for depression, anxiety, dread, and a feeling that it's all too much for us this upcoming week. (The full Mercury in Scorpio retrograde post can be found here.)

One of the keys to getting out from under the paralyzing, suffocating weight of these times is to tunnel down beneath the Band-Aid cures, beneath the glossy, inspirational idioms, right to the roots of the situation.

There are power dynamics and scenarios and relationships creating depression for us now. Pinpointing exactly what's going on can be painful, but ultimately it is liberating. In fact, penetrating to what's really going on, beneath all the symptomatic pain and depression, is ultimately the only liberation right now.

With Mercury (conversation) coming together with Saturn (depression), people are talking about depression, and this is a good thing, for the most part.

Depression is often talked about as if it is a disease, and it certainly can be.

But depression is also a natural bio-chemical response to the state of things on this planet. This is what most people miss. Or maybe it's what they choose to gloss over because then they are not in control. Then the issues snowball. They become huge and unmanageable via the usually prescribed methods. And there is no real solution - only understanding, acceptance, love, endurance, and a willingness to stare it all down, to expose it.

One of the biggest sources of fuel for depression these days is the degree of collective denial we are living with en masse. It's emotionally upsetting, to say the very least. This is the distance between the bottom line reality on this planet and the way most people - including our so-called leaders - are living. The decisions being made and the options being presented don't have much basis in that bottom line reality. Most are living in an artificial state of manufactured reality, and there isn't much that is more depressing to a natural, biological being than living in artifice. Take a look at the animals in the zoo.

We are connected to the living beings who are suffering on this planet, and they're connected to us and to our suffering. And when that suffering is denied, avoided, glossed over, brushed aside, it adds a heaping helping of psychic disturbance to our psyches. Did you really think you were just going to go about your happy, happy life while the majority of this planet suffers under systems and structures that create and reinforce that pain? That's not how life on this round, rotating ball really works.

You remember what went on in Iraq? What's still going on? Well, the devastation and pain from that is monstrous, unimaginable, and it has ripple effects that haven't even gotten started yet. We're going to be dealing with this one for centuries.

You know the nightmare going on in Fukushima these days? That affects you. It affects all of us. It seeps into our psyches, whether we pay it any conscious heed or not. We're tied to the water on this planet, to the creatures in that water. We're tied to the workers on the Fukushima front lines who are being irradiated as I type. We're tied to the emotional and psychic states of other living beings. We can't separate ourselves from this "terrible tragedy that's happening somewhere else." We're teetering on the brink, right here, right now, and we have been since March 11, 2011.

You remember when we thought the oil gusher and massive, criminal dosing of Core-exit in the Gulf of Mexico was the big collective problem? Doesn't Chiron in Pisces have a funny way of putting things in context for us?

We live in a world that wants to separate people into the happy and the unhappy, the joyful and the depressed, the fortunate and the unfortunate, the normal and the abnormal, the positive and the negative.

But those distinctions are not real.

If the scenarios on Planet Earth during transiting Chiron in Pisces (2011 - 2019) teach us anything, it's that what affects one will eventually affect all. There is no real line between the fortunates and the unfortunates. We cannot separate ourselves from the corruption, the murder, the erosion, the destruction, the poisoning that are going on - no matter what dimension you mistakenly believe you are ascending to, no matter how much fake currency you have in your bank account.

The fascists didn't really lose the war.

And now they've gotten into our food, into our water, into our air, into our minds, into our psychic environments, into our relationships, and into the social fabric that holds us together.

They have people chasing money and luxury items and tropical vacations and 200 "likes" on their seductive, social media selfies. They have people chasing a highly skewed idea of "success," all so very poisonous and destructive during the Pluto in Capricorn years.

They have people regimented in inhumane 8 to 5 office schedules that do not take into account the natural ebb and flow of energy in a biological organism.

And they have people convinced that if they can't sustain this grueling Monday to Friday march, they are worthless, damaged, less than whole. In short, if you can't keep up with that relentless, robotic, fluorescently-lit pace, there's something very, very wrong with you.

If you have to work two or three jobs just to keep a roof over your head and food on your table, there's something wrong with you.

If you are a man who can't work 14, 16, 18-hour days, there is something wrong with you.

If you are woman who can't cheerfully whip up culinary delights for her family every night of the week after working a full day, there is something wrong with you.

They have people snowed, that's for sure.

They have people blaming themselves for situations that have been planned and orchestrated to be just this bad...and worse.

There is a natural ebb and flow to the energy of a human being. The Moon cycles are a big indicator of this. But we are in the Pluto in Capricorn years: caffeine and drug-fuelled to keep us going and going and going. We are in a series of years when it's considered a sickness if you need to rest, if you need to slow down, if you need to just stop for a little while.

We're convinced by a toxic pharmaceutical-pushing medical establishment that we need to be medicated. We need to be more "up" or more "down" or more something in order to be normal, sane, healthy.

Not once does that medical establishment look at the insanity of the constant merry-go-round. Not once does it look at the intentional disruption of the biological systems on this planet. Not once does it look at our food, our water, our air, our mental, psychic, and physical environments.

And so it misses the point.

With Mars in the sign of the worker making an opposition to Chiron in Pisces, it's your job this week - our job - to get to the point. To root this the fuck out so that it stops preying on us.

It's our job to make the connections between a) how we feel and b) what is going on on this planet that could be leading us to feel that way.

It's our job to tunnel down to the last despicable roots, to the last areas of manipulation, and to pull it out. All the way. No half-assed jobs.

It's our job this week to look at the basic facts, at the basic realities, and to make our decisions from there.

It's our job not to make ourselves pathological just because our biology is responding in a perfectly understandable fashion to stressful and frightening situations.

It's our job to understand depression as a natural and normal reaction to a world that has gone way off course. It's our job to integrate it as much as possible, to keep our emotional states as fluid as possible, to feel it all, right down deep, but not to allow it to drag us under and keep us there.

We're moving into a New Moon in Scorpio conjunct Saturn on November 3 (7:50 a.m. CST). This New Moon is also an eclipse.

This means we are in the Dark of the Moon for a good chunk of this next week, one of those natural energetic low points I was talking about. Again, understand the insanity of a system that ignores this fundamental energy cycle, this Moon cycle, this ebb and flow, this soul root. Don't make the natural reactions of your biology and emotional chemistry into the insane things.

During this Dark of the Moon phase, we experience All Hallow's Eve October 31, a time when we have to be very energetically vigilant. We also experience the fourth of seven squares between Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn on November 1.

Again, putting personal feelings and reactions into their broader context is necessary. Things are being planned and orchestrated according to this square series, just as they were in the 1930s when we last experienced a series of squares between these two bodies. There is evil on this planet attempting to direct us into a death march, and the only way we don't succumb to the depression of this is to continually expose it, rip the mask off it, get pissed off about it, talk about it, laugh at it, and look at the ugly, ugly things it is doing so that we can break its hold and its manipulation wherever we can.

Getting to the deep-down emotional and psychological roots is necessary. Understanding the pathology of the structures, the power hierarchies, the relentless corporate pace, and understanding our natural reactions to that pathology, is necessary.

To get out from under the most detrimental weight of all this, we have to put it into context. We have to see it clearly. We have to stop blaming ourselves. We have to put our emotional and psychological reactions into their proper context until they don't seem insane at all. Until they seem downright valiant!

This upcoming week, if you do nothing else, break out of the current medical establishment mindset that makes individuals sick, damaged, and pathological without any correlations made to the sick, damaged, and pathological collective structures and ways of doing things.

Refuse the weight of this bullshit diagnosis. Refuse all the bullshit diagnoses. Don't make your emotional reactions to these upsetting times a bad thing, a wrong thing. Trust your emotional body, and follow its cues and impulses in order to stay the course.

Strength to you all, and keep your spirits up!