Drupada MacDonald: Dashas - The Timing of your Lessons

I sat down with Vedic astrologer and teacher Dupada MacDonald to make dashas feel practical, humane, and surprisingly empowering. 

We explore the Vimshottari Mahadasha system as a way to time karma and growth, then ground it in real stories and concrete remedies you can actually use.

• what dashas are and why Vimshottari Mahadasha dominates modern Jyotish
• seeing each Mahadasha as a homework assignment for spiritual growth
• how strong and weak planets ripen as “lead singer” periods over time
• benefic and malefic planets and the yogic move beyond good and bad
• Venus and Sun periods as lived examples of pleasure, disillusionment, and soul driven clarity
• dharma, artha, kama, moksha and using motive to spiritualize any life aim
• subperiods and sub subperiods and how timing can get extremely specific
• remedial measures as strengthening the aura, not magical thinking
• Saturn support through Shani Daan, service, charity, and Saturday discipline
• mantras and inner practices including Ganesha and Mahamrityunjaya approaches

If this podcast resonates with you, do hit subscribe.

If you're new to Vedic astrology and would like to learn how to read your own birth chart, I've put together a free guide called 10 Simple Steps to Read Your Vedic birth chart

Visit astrologywithsurya.com for more

Transcript

Welcome And Why Jyotish Helps

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Jyotish A Vedic Astrology Podcast. This show is here to offer clarity, perspective, and deeper self-understanding as we learn to work with the energy of the planet. I'm Surya from astrology with Surya.com. If this podcast resonates with you, do hit subscribe. It really helps this show to grow and allows us to continue sharing these thoughtful conversations from across the world of Vedic astrology. Enjoy the show. Today I'm joined by Dupada MacDonald. Dupada is a Vedic astrologer, teacher, and disciple of Yoga Nanda, living in Ananda village in California. He's been studying and teaching astrology for over 40 years, and he's given thousands of readings around the world over the years. His approach combines the wisdom of Vedic astrology with a deep focus on spiritual growth and the teachings of yoga. So it's an absolute honor to welcome Drew Pada to the podcast. So, welcome, Drew Pada. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. Great to have you.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Good to be with you.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

So

What Dashas Are Really For

SPEAKER_00 1:14

today we're going to be talking about the Dashas, which is one of the most useful and important tools that we have in Vedic astrology. So, could you just start by telling us a little bit about what the Dashas are and how they influence our lives?

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Well, Indian astrology is very ancient and mysterious. And actually, there's multiple Dasha systems traditionally, like more than double digit. But the main one that is used in these days is called the Vimshatri uh Mahadasha system. And it's a way of determining which part of your karma in your horoscope is activated the most. And it's about timing because uh we all have nine basic planets in the Indian system. I was a Western astrology student before that, and so I learned to appreciate the outer planets, but they're not a part of classical Vedic astrology. And uh each planet has, you could, if you were a scientist, you would say it has a magnetic field, you know, and that magnetic field is affecting all the other planets in the solar system. And the solar system is really uh a reflection for the internal solar system, which is the chakra centers and energy centers of consciousness within us. So there's a classic saying in astrology, as above, so below. And this is a very astrology-oriented saying, it's saying that the energy going on in the heavens will affect life on earth. But a more mystical uh kind of derivative of that is as within, so without. Uh, and it means that the outer world and the inner world are connected. And and we are born at that place and that time when the energy of that moment uh is in mathematical harmony with our individual karma for this lifetime. These are the paraphrased words of Parmansa Yogananda's guru Swami Shri Yuktishwar. So we are magnetically drawn to a moment of birth by the magnetism of our karma that is emanating from our chakras. A happy person could not be born at a sad moment. A sad person could not be born at a happy moment. A happy person could live wrongly and misuse their good karma and fall into sadness. A sad person could get on the stick and really live well and become happy. We're talking about the beginning. So we are all uh born at a certain time. Our horoscope starts when we take our first breath. And in the horoscope, some planets could be strong, others could be weak. Quite a few will be mediocre or kind of everyday person type. And this is determined by like how we lived in the past. If you were a great lover in a previous life, you most likely would have a strong Venus in this lifetime. If you were a mathematician, you might have Saturn or Mercury strong. Uh, not too many people are good at everything they do, you know. So if you were like an engineer, you may not be good at impressionistic art. You know, uh Leonardo da Vinci probably would have been, but how many Leonardo da Vinci's are running around on the planet designing helicopters 500 years before the first one was manufactured? So so so anyway, we have nine main planets. Each one is like you could think a room in a mansion with a certain energy. And I remember when I was a young man and I was in my Venus period at the age of 14, uh, and Venus runs 20 years in the Vimshatri Mahadasha period. And if you let's say you're 18 years old and you're in a 20-year period, you're just going to assume that's who you are. Because how much history do you have living as a human being? You you may have only been in one period your entire life. Uh, this system is based on nine periods, each one having its own length of time that add up to 120 years. And you could say 120 years sounds uh like longer than is relevant to lifespan these days. But remember, uh back in like around the year 1000, a generation in Europe was 30 years, you see. Uh uh, and and uh now what is the longevity? I don't know exactly, but maybe 80 years, 85 years. Uh, and and we're in the beginning of Dwapara Yuga in the uh teachings of the self-realization masters, and it's 2,000 more years approximately to run. So it could easily be that people are living 120 years in 500 years. You know, it's like uh uh because we'll be getting more magnetism from the center of the galaxy, and it would be like having a better light on your plants in your in your indoor garden. They're gonna get more energy, they're gonna grow more. So we go through a series of periods. My Venus started when I was 14, it ended when I was 34. My Venus is decent. I mean, I basically was a young person wanting to have fun and find myself. But the next period in my chart, the sun, is pretty strong. And that is when my astrology career started. Uh, up until that point, it was a hobby, and it was a hobby for self-healing. I had no career goals as an astrologer, I was just trying to uh learn what I needed to learn about how to be a happier version of myself. Uh and and at 34, the Venus period ended. It's not that Venus suddenly was eliminated or you know, taken out of the equation. If you a good analogy would be a musical group of nine musicians, and all the musicians are adding their sound to the overall uh music, and the music of all your nine planets is your aura. You see, it's the energy emanating from all your chakras, plus the two main nadis, Ida and pingala, and that is nine musicians emanating sound vibration. And so when uh Mahadasha ends, that planet was the lead singer, he was the leader of the band. Uh, for positive or negative or for mediocre. If it was a strong planet, might have been like good karma from a past life. If it was a weak planet, it might have been something you didn't really work on too much in the past or didn't do too well. But in a lot of cases, it's mixed, you know, as kind of ups and downs mixed together. So, in any case, if you have a strong and virtuous planet in your chart and you come to that Mahadasha, you are gonna benefit from good actions in a previous life, like a flower blossoming in this life. And if you have a planet that is weak and maybe not uh the best energy, then it's time to improve it. You see, uh, and and what people don't understand is everyone would agree if you saw a picture of yourself when you were five years old, and then another picture of yourself when you were 18, and then another picture when you're 35, and so on. So we get quite a few pictures of your life, and you would say, Well, each picture I look a little different, don't I? And yet on the inside, psychologically, you would still be saying, That's me. You see, so on the inside, we're the same person, but we also go through a journey of growing and changing, and these are due to the various Mahadashas. I'm

Homework Assignments Instead Of Fate

SPEAKER_01 10:09

a yogi astrologer, not just only an astrologer. An astrologer, primarily doing astrology, is like a weather predictor. You're trying to analyze horoscope to see what will be the energy that comes from your whole person's horoscope at various times in their life. And that's why one name for astrology is Jyotish. And uh one translation of that is science of light. And it means that the purpose of astrology is to shine light on your life situation so that you will know what you're working with. You won't be flying blind, you'll know what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are, what supportive times will be there, what challenging times will be there. And so you can then plan accordingly. And that's very, very useful. But as a yogi, we could say we're also trying to learn how to make the weather. That takes practice, but when you improve your inner energy flow, when you get stronger positive will and mind, you can you could say polish your planets. You can improve your planets, and that is the spiritual path. And when you do that, then we could look at Mahadashas a little bit differently. You could say it is the it is the homework assignment you have been given in a certain time of your life. You see, so for me, uh I was in Venus from 14 until 34. The first half of that, uh, I thought the homework assignment was to have as much fun as possible, uh, and uh which is pretty typical of Venus and a young person in a free society. But then Venus is also a planet who dreams of love and beauty and uh the beautiful possibilities of life, like a goddess. And uh my Venus got disillusioned, and by 23 I was living in an ashram, uh, looking for a way to improve my life. Uh, and that then we could say it was about learning about the heart. Uh, and then uh, and then when I came to the sun period in my early 30s, it was time to kind of surf. Uh, and my son had a lot of energy, had more energy than my Venus, and uh it was very kind of surprising to me because the son basically said to me, You have a lot to do, you better get your act together. It's gonna happen, so you better get ready. It wasn't like I wanted it, it just happened, and that suggests that it was prepared in a previous life, and that and that is the meaning of these Mahadashas, that they are activating different pockets of your karmic energy at different times, and it could be in a positive way, and it can be in a challenging way, uh uh, but that's the idea. So you can look at a horoscope, and someone might have the greatest combination, and then they're struggling, and you'd say, like, what's going on? Like, they got this fantastic Jupiter, fantastic Venus. Why aren't they like, you know, the king of Siam or something like that? And their life is kind of normal. And then you look at the Mahadasha, and they're not in the Mahadasha of those strong planets, they're in a Mahadasha of another planet that might be, you know, making you work harder or do your lesson. So it's all about timing. The Mahadashas activate uh one of your planets, and it can be for quite a long time. Venus is the longest period, 20 years. That's often enjoyable for people. Saturn is second longest, 19 years. That is often one of the uh more work and responsibility periods, uh kind of like running a marathon race, you could say. Then uh Rahu is 18 years. That often is exploring your options in the world. If you're a spiritual person, Rahu might be service, service to the world. Then you've got uh Mercury is 17 years, that's the Mercury's the communicator, the thinker, and then you have Jupiter who is 16 years, and then all the others are shorter, you know. Sun is six years, moon is 10 years, Mars is seven. Uh so anyway, uh K2 is seven. So that's the idea that the Mahadasha shows what planets are activated, but obviously 20 years is not going to be exactly the same. So the way they calculate it is that there's a certain ratio of each planet getting a percentage of the 120 years. And as far as I know, nobody knows why this ratio exists, that it comes from ancient uh antiquity, uh, and like Vedic times, perhaps, if not the Vedic times, Satya Yuga, then certainly from Traita Yuga. Not it has to, it can't be any lower than Traita Yuga. And we don't know why this Mahadasha system uh was created and exactly how it was created, but there are seven, eight thousand years of data using it. So there's all this there's all this uh experience, like for example, the horoscope of Lord Rama is in the public record in India. Uh, and he was a king 5,000 years ago, and they were doing this astrology then. So if you went through his life, which was a very dramatic life, because uh his wife was kidnapped, he had to start a war, he had to go get her back, and there were some very dramatic moments. And if you followed these Mahadashas, you would find that uh often these events or changes happen right on schedule, you know. And having been a Western astrologer first, uh, and Western astrology is uh having a lot of elements of Vedic in it, like echoes from the ancient past, but most western astrologers don't like to pin things down too precisely. They want they want uh it's kind of a humanitarian, uh humanistic attitude of Western culture.

Benefics Malefics And Living Beyond Duality

SPEAKER_01 17:16

Everything can be good, and I'm actually have that attitude. Swami Kriananda, my teacher, had that attitude. Everything can be good, but some planets are called benefic, meaning harmonious, and some planets are called malefic, meaning challenging. Uh, and if we want to call a challenging planet good, you better be ready to do the work, and you better know what the work is. The king of the benevolent planets is Jupiter, and Jupiter's name in Sanskrit is Guru, and he is the planet of expansion of consciousness. Uh, and he's like the laughing Buddha or the laughing Ganesha, he's very happy with them. Yogananda was a very Jupiterian master, full of joy, and the king of the mollific planets is Saturn. That doesn't mean he's bad, it means that he's a tough coach. Like if you wanted to be an Olympic competitor in the Olympics, and you got yourself a Romanian coach who made you work 10 hours a day very intensely, uh, that would be hard work for sure. But when you get your perfect 10 and a gold medal, you'd be looking good. That's how Saturn is. He's the planet of put one foot in front of the other, do the work and learn your lessons. That's why he's not so popular. And Venus, on the other hand, is Friday night, let's go to the party. She's very popular because it's like, let's have uh ice cream, let's have sweetness. So every planet has his job to do. And in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna Krishna says a very interesting thing. A yogi is one who does not distinguish between auspicious and inauspicious occurrences. Why? Because it's all God. And if you uh if you go on a beautiful vacation and have a lovely time with your fam, that's very auspicious. If you get a sudden broken tooth and have to rush to the dentist, that is not what we would want. But we're happy to have good dentists in England that you can go to and get your tooth fixed. So this world is a world of duality, and duality has pleasure and pain. And uh there will be ups and there will be downs. If we're doing astrology in a yogic way, we're using all these planets and situations as an opportunity to transcend the duality and to go to the joy of the soul in the middle. So, anyway, some planets are benevolent, some planets are testing. If you're in a period of a planet who's testing, and you just innocently say everything can be good, and you don't do anything to make them better, then well, Saturn period is 19 years. I've talked to people a lot many times over 38 years about being in the Saturn period for 19 years. I have a strong Saturn myself. So that would be like having a profound master who gave you some work to do, and you say it will all be good, but then you didn't do the work. But if you do the work, Saturn can become like a Buddha, and he's really then he'd be like freedom and wisdom and really clear and really strong. So, anyway, each planet has its purpose. Some are easier to understand than others. Uh, the shortest of these periods is sun, six years. Six years is still six years. Uh, and uh I take each dasa is my homework assignment. Like this is what the energy I'm learning about uh in my horoscope. And if I'm good at it, it will be easier to learn it. If I'm not good at it, it'll take maybe some years in the beginning to get the hang of it. You see, so so as a yogi, I take the Mahadasha as my current homework assignment that I'm learning to work with that element of my nature, and of course, as a human being, I would like favorable things to happen. So I'm not always dealing with problems and setbacks. So that side of it is there. Uh so what we're talking about is timing and timing uh which one of your musical uh group uh is the leader?

unknown 21:59

And

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Big Mahadasha changes are really fascinating, you know, because you can uh uh you can make some very interesting case studies. Uh I have some on the tip of my tongue, but then we talk about that the whole the whole time. Uh but uh so that's the way I look at it. And uh when you see people, because almost all of my clients are on the spiritual path or getting on the spiritual path. I have very few that aren't on the spiritual path, and even those people in their own way are kind of on the spiritual path. That's a lot more fun for me because then the people are wanting to learn. You see, and even if you get a period that's not easy, uh, my attitude is a little different than classical predictive Hindu astrology, where they don't listen to Sri Krishna's advice. He said, uh yogi is one who does not distinguish between auspicious and inauspicious occurrences. But most astrologers in India are doing exactly that. They are and they are analyzing which planets are benevolent, which planets are challenging, and they're trying to manipulate the horoscope to get a better life experience. And of course, we all want a better life experience. But if you look at the deeper nature of each planet and really learn about it on a profound level, that's the best way to get a positive experience. It's like uh inner work leading to outward improving energy in your life. So, uh simple question, uh uh long answer. It's about timing, and it's about what energy like fruit on a tree do you have from the past? And sometimes fruit is ripe and ready to be picked, and sometimes the fruit is still needs to stay on the tree and keep growing. So you'll see sometimes something is ready to go, sometimes something my Venus period was the opposite of my son, it was 20 years of uh learning and growing. My son period came and went pretty fast, it's only six years, and then uh life moves

Venus To Sun Shifts And Soul Wisdom

SPEAKER_01 24:30

on.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

Well, first of all, I love the idea that of it being a homework assignment and just seeing it in that way as we're learning lessons rather than thinking, oh, is this gonna be good? Is this gonna be bad? Interestingly, we actually went through Dash's a very similar time because I went into my Venus period at the age of like 12, something like that. And so that period for me also, I mean, I was very outward and partying and looking for fun, but my my natural inclination is more introverted, so to have that fun and to enjoy and get that Venusian pleasure for me it involved like alcohol, drugs, partying, and that kind of stuff. And in my chart, Venus is not my strongest planet at all. Uh, Venus is combust, he's uh in a planetary war with Mars, 12th Lord, and so there's associations with addiction and so on. And it was really interesting what you were saying about then you came to the sun period, because that was the same for me. When I got to that sun period, I quit all that stuff. I started learning about Ananda, started learning about astrology, and my son is strong as well, a little complex, but certainly strong in the 10th house, and so that period for me also was about uh learning to understand myself better, attuned to my spiritual path, and attuned to the truth, right? Because a lot of the Venus years was a little bit not so connected to to the truth.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

Well, well, if you if you just did a popularity contest with all the planets and humanity, uh Venus would be most popular because uh everybody likes to have fun. Uh, and the highest fun would be like bliss and divine love and open heart, but that's not so many people. But everybody likes ice cream and a party and uh and have a good time until it doesn't work anymore, until it doesn't distract you from your inner emptiness or your inner pain. Uh, and then what does the sun represent? Well, if we were doing humanistic astrology, as in Western astrology, we'd say the sun represents your confidence or your will or your ability to express itself. But in the Vedic system, the first meaning of the sun is soul, Atma. And what does the sun do? He shines light, and that light allows us to see. So the highest meaning of the sun is wisdom. You see, uh uh, and that wisdom isn't like just be good and you get into heaven. It's like wisdom is who are you? And that wisdom is is wisdom is one word, another word you could say is bliss and wisdom together. So the sun represents so all the things Venus was looking for in the parties or whatever, it was the sun. You see, you see, uh and yet maybe you weren't ready because Venus was overheating because of combustion and this and that. So she's a little like you know, activated to go exploring, and then you come to the sun, and the sun is uh strong, and uh was your soul saying, You're looking in the wrong place. Here's a better place to look. And it's even though it's only six years, the sun period is you could make an argument uh that it is the first dasha, you see, and that Venus is the last dasha, that it's because the sun is the center of our solar system, and he is the star shining light. And if we took the sun out of there, the solar system just be a bunch of rocks there. And uh so the sun is giving the energy and the consciousness at the center of the solar system, and he represents that energy and consciousness at the center of each and every person. And so that's why Yogananda called his uh his path the path of self-realization. So uh so anyway, it's a good thing to have a strong sun, and that stabilized you. And now uh now you've gone, now you're as an astrologer, you've gone through Venus, through Sun, and now you're entered into the moon period. So that gives you it's a real good opportunity to have firsthand experience. There's one school of thought that says you can't be an astrologer until you've had your second Saturn return, because then you will have gone through like every transit and a whole lot of the dashas. The problem with that is like everyone would be beginning when they're supposed to retire. So so there's not going to be any astrologers if everyone waits until they're 60, 57 to 60. Uh, but the point is valid, is that we have to live through these things. And when we and for someone like yourself, who's like a teacher or minister type, you get to live through them and then you get to practice the teachings. Like uh Master Yogananda said, we should all be like mad scientists in the laboratory of consciousness, making experiments into reality. So you have all these tools, and then you go through these periods and you try your meditation techniques, your mantras, whatever it may be, to see what works with that energy. You see, and so if you were in the sun period and your sun's dominant in the 10th house, you would have a lot of willpower. And if you go into the moon period, is you might find that you might want to explore uh like devotion and like receptivity and flowing with the energy, uh, but it's only the beginning, you see. So you get to have opportunity to experiment. So that makes it really fun. And I think what you said there is the key. Because if we do only predictive astrology and we give all the power to the planets, like if I have a good period, life is good, if I have good transit, life is good, if I have a difficult period, life is hard, if I have difficult transit, you see, then all the power is in the planets in the stars, and then you're kind of hoping you'll have a good period. But the thing is, about half the planets are benevolent, and about half are not. So that would mean an entire life, you would have about half of your life would have good influences, and half of your life would have challenging. You see, but that's not the truth. Each and every planet uh can be good. The difficult ones need wisdom and self-control. And the ones that are just naturally good, well, it's easy. So uh, so anyway, now you in 10 years you'll be able to give us a very good class on the moon in the ninth house, you know, uh, as a ruler of the ninth house. And uh, but you've already told me one thing that you couldn't do a job that didn't have meaning to you. And the ninth house is the planet of like, what's my sacred purpose? You know, like why am I here? Like, what's the meaning of a life? Is it just paying the rent and providing for my family, which is important for a father? But even more important would be that you're getting lit up with inspiration because the ninth house is that key house spiritually. Yeah,

Happiness Dharma And The Ninth House

SPEAKER_01 32:42

we all want to be happy. This is Yogananda's teaching. It's so simple. Uh Yogananda uh wrote a book called The Science of Religion, and it's a book published by Self-Realization Fellowship, but he didn't actually write the entire book, he wrote the outline for the book, and then he had an Indian disciple who was very intellectual write the book, and it had Yogananda's ideas, but it didn't have his vibration. So Swami Kriananda rewrote the book. Uh, and in Swami's creative way, it became a bigger book. And that book is called God is for everyone. And the and the theme of this book is very simple. Everybody wants to be happy, and everybody wants to uh avoid suffering. Uh and you show me any human being, and they tell they really want suffering. I say, once we get them less messed up and they're more normal, they will not want to suffer. Everybody wants to be happy, and this is Yogananda called this is the spiritual path, searching for the your your joy of the soul and avoiding suffering. And everybody is on this path, whether they know it or not. And so God has given us free will, and He is saying, go find your bliss. And many of us just say thanks, and we go off. And if we're 12 and we're in our Venus period, we think we know how to find the bliss, and we go to parties and we do the things young people do, but eventually realize I don't think I was finding bliss, I think I was finding pleasure and pain, ups and downs, you know. And uh, and so eventually we come back and we say, I'm all for the bliss, I'm not quite sure how to find it. How do I find it? And that's when we go to the ninth house. The ninth house is the house of the wisdom teacher and the wisdom teachings. This is the suggestions from the universe, how to find your bliss. And if we're open, then we will say, you know, I'm not doing that great on my own. I when I was young, I had a lot of plans in Leo. I thought I would knew what I was doing, but uh in reality, I need a little advice. How do I find that bliss? And that's the teachings of Buddha and Krishna and Yogananda and Christ, and pick your master, pick your tradition. Uh, all these high masters, this is the ninth house, and this is the main house of dharma. And dharma is the Hindu and Buddhist word that means living in harmony with truth. And this is a big question right now because of our world situation. Right now, we have the whole world is like confused about truth and how life works, and I'm not here to proselytize, I'm just saying we all want to be happy, we need to know how to live. So the ninth house is the house that if you did if you knew someone that was a ninth house person and you didn't know anything about astrology or yoga or spirituality, and they were a strong ninth house person, you would say, that's a good person, and for some reason they're lucky, you know, and you and you'd say, Why things work out for them, and they're like positive most of the time and like helpful. And you see, the thing is in astrology, in the law of karma, there's no such thing as luck. There's good karma, there's bad karma, there's mixed karma, and there's the grace of God, which is above karma. And the ninth house, if strong, is going to be good karma or the grace of God, and when that happens, you've got good energy flowing into your life, and that good energy is coming from, if you're a Buddhist and you don't talk about divinities, you could say from the Buddha nature. If you were a uh Vedantic monk, you would say from your higher self, and if you are bhakti type, you would say it's the grace and blessings of the divine. So the ninth house uh is dharma. There's a saying traditionally in India that where there is dharma, meaning trying to live by doing the right thing, there will be victory, even if it takes

Four Aims Of Life In Practice

SPEAKER_01 37:23

time. So, this is how we can get into the details about Mahadashas, because every planet, every house in astrology is an area of life experience, like finance or friends, or children, or marriage, or career. And these 12 houses fall into four categories, which are called the aims of life, the four aims of life. And the teaching is that any action you would make in your life is going to fall, be motivated by one of these aims. The first aim is called dharma, to live an honorable life connected to truth. The second uh aim of life is artha, which is material resources. For most people, that's material security and their income and their investments. The third aim of life is kama. What do you want to do? Like, so let's say you have a good boat, a good job, and you've made a lot of money and you want to buy a boat. So you can go buy a boat and put it on a lake and recreate, do what you want. You know, it's like let's go have fun. Kama is very popular. And the last one is moksha. Moksha is inner freedom. I just want inner happiness and freedom. Uh, it's called liberation, but each and every one of us has a soul inside. We're not manufacturing a soul when we do spiritual living, we're trying to clean the window so that we can see the soul. So uh anything you would do is going to be dharma, artha, kama, moksha. So when you go into a period of a planet, you can see by the houses it rules what its motivation is. You see, is it primarily like, let's do what I want? Is it primarily let's get a good job and earn money? Is it primarily like let's express my true nature and find my true dharma in this world? Or uh is it I just want to graduate? And if you remember the children's movie, which uh you might remember it because uh because you're a father, so you might watch it with your children. E.T., the movie E.T. And what does E.T. say? E.T. phone home. I want to go home. You see, like if you've been Yogananda said, if you're a serious spiritual person, you may have already lived one million human lifetimes looking for the joy of your soul. So let's say you are 995,000 lifetimes old, it may not be that attractive to go to a Venus party on Friday night because you've already been doing Venus in so many lifetimes. You said, Yeah, I tried that a lot, and it was fun for a while, and then it wasn't. And when when uh when all those things that we tried, like wild enjoyment and stuff, no longer do it, we might just want peace. We just might want to, uh, as the Bible says, be still and know I am God. So obviously, moksha is less common. Uh, Dharma would be like, let's do the right thing, let's pursue wisdom and truth in our life. But what is most popular? I mean, I live in a country uh that gives us freedom to pursue our goals and dreams, but most Americans are pursuing artha and kama, uh uh, which is their material resources and their desires, and no one is saying that's wrong. But uh a yogi/slash astrologer might say that will not give them what they want in the end, you see, but they can go try, they can go see. Uh, and dharma and moksha is the more obvious spiritual. But any even Artha could be spiritual. Let's say you're a good businessman and you get tired of business, uh, and you still have still good at it. So then you might like uh volunteer to do fundraising for your spiritual group, and now you're now you're doing something you're good at, uh, but you're doing it not only for your own ego, you're doing it for something of a broader purpose, and now we have turned artha into karma yoga, you see, like uh uh like having uh 10th lord and tenth house and volunteering in ananda sangha. You see, that would be using your artha uh and offering it to higher purpose. So so old thinking would say kama and artha are materialistic. Uh holistic new age thinking would say God made everything, including material resources and individual initiative. So it's really comes down to the motive. What is the motive of what you do? Uh what that is the animating principle, and and even if you had desire, like you uh I know plenty of Americans that have plenty of desire and they're spiritual people, and they uh and they use that desire to be active and to serve and do their spiritual life, and then they love to go on a trip and have fun too. You see, it's it's like you can you can take any energy, and the way Swami Kriananda would put it, if you like to go shopping, it's not evil or wrong to go shopping if you're trying to get liberated spiritually, you should go shopping and buy gifts for friends, you see, and then you would be expanding your motive to include the happiness of more people, and that would be growthful, you see, and uh and the comma part of you, let's go shopping, you see. But if you went shopping and only bought stuff for yourself, then you would be egoistic, you see. But if you but if you include other realities, then you are even turning comma into a spiritual quality. Uh and Artha, like you went and had a good job and you earned money, and then you use money to donate to a spiritual group or to help something. So any planning. Any house, any position can be spiritual if you think of it in an expansive way. Expansion means moving towards bigger reality. Contraction means moving towards only your own ego. So we're all on a staircase, and you can take a step up that staircase, or you can take a step down. And when you include the happiness of others and the benefit of the world, you're just going up the staircase. If you're just uh like a turtle who got scared and pulled all his legs into the shelf, then you are being motivated by self-interest, which is normal, but it's also normal to get blocked. So anything with expansion can become spiritual, in my opinion. So in your your case, entering ninth house after your son, that's a beautiful opportunity for you. You get uh now, you got 10 years to play with that. And uh so that's how I think. I think, okay, some planets are tricky. I'm in a tricky period now, I'm in Rahu. And Rahu uh is very active. I would prefer uh I like having free time and I'm booked out eight months. You know, it's like uh that's uh that's because my guru doesn't want me to be lazy. Uh and uh uh and Rahu, if you overwork, you can get kind of like workaholic or too too too much going on, and too much going on, you kind of you lose your center a little bit. So there's challenges to Rahu, period. But on the other hand, Rahu can give great enthusiasm and creativity. So every period has got his tests and challenges and its opportunities, and uh uh God made all the planets, so he's in each and every one. It's like a there's a gift to be discovered by each one. Some of the gifts are harder to win. Saturn, period, to get Saturn to give you his wisdom and peace. It takes kind of real spirituality. He can also Saturn can give success in the world, companies like Saturn, governments like Saturn, organizations like Saturn, anybody who wants someone who can uh take responsibility, they like Saturn. It's just that often the Saturn person doesn't recharge their battery enough. So, anyway, yeah, that's

Subperiods And Why Timing Gets Precise

SPEAKER_01 46:40

the way I look at it. The dashas are like uh your current homework assignment, and sometimes they go on a long time, and sometimes they're sure they're shorter, and then we get to even the all these dashas have subperiods. So there will be a smaller period within the larger period, and they have sub-subperiods. In fact, you can take it all the way to sub-sub sub sub five periods, but for that you need perfect uh birth information, and you need to be very confident in the ayanamsha you use. But if you're taking it down to the fifth level, that'll be like one to three days. So, and then you can keep track of how the energy is changing. One that's the sort of thing an astrologer would do, just to kind of uh the minutia of everything. But on a practical level, the three levels is very good to follow because let's say it's a Venus period, then the subperiod will be one to three years, and the sub-subperiod will be several months, and what you do is you notice changes. Like I just got an email yesterday from a friend in India. Her mother has had a fall and she has broken her back, but evidently it's not like a paralysis thing, just a fracture, and she has to stay in bed for four weeks, and she has just gone into the sub-period. The main period is Venus, but the sub-period is Mars, and the sub-subperiod is Saturn. And Mars and Saturn together is a combination that can give accident because uh they're kind of different energies, like oil and olive oil and vinegar. They don't blend easily. You have to have wisdom to blend Saturn and uh Mars, and even then it might not stick. So, anyway, uh, and she was asking when might this change? Because she had, and the email said her mom has to stay in bed four weeks. And I checked and I said, Well, this Venus period, Venus is in the ninth house, that looks good. But then I looked at subperiod Mars. Oh, that's interesting because Mars can be uh uh accident and injury planet, and then the sub-sub period is Saturn, and they she wanted to know, she wasn't wanting advice, she just wanted to know when's it gonna stop. And I said, Well, the Saturn sub-sub period ends in the 2nd of July, exactly four weeks from when her bed rest is supposed to end. You see, so so the anyone who studied Western astrology in depth and Indian astrology in depth, when you get the hang of these Mahadashas, you'll see that sometimes they're very, very precise. And uh, Western astrologer doesn't have the tool like the Mahadasha for predictive astrology, it zeroes in what energy is really activated right now, and uh there's really no comparison, in my opinion, although there are great Western astrologers, and it depends on their intuition. But in terms of the technical stuff, the Vedic astrology is a lot of tools, and the Vimshotri Mahadasha is very accurate if you have accurate earth time. So uh, so that's take your your plan. Let's say uh I have a lot of monks and nuns in my world, previous life monks and nuns, who are again monks and nuns in this life, and some of them uh are already very dharmic, very spiritual, you know, and then they might come to a kama planet as their Mahadasha. Uh and and they might like take up a hobby like music or art because spirit is telling them you should also enjoy your life, you shouldn't just do sacrifice and service and spiritual practice. And so, in some cases, you know, comma could be like enjoy life. And if someone had been like overly working or overly austere, uh, I had a friend when I lived in Italy once, and she is a great soul, very obviously a mother superior from her previous life. She's very got a lot of responsibility in Ananda Assisi, and she was actually an introverted person, but it's not possible to be introverted in Italy in a spiritual community because Italians are social people, and so for seven years she was the head of this group, and she had to be social for seven years, but on her day and a half off, she she grew roses, she had a rose garden, and she enjoyed that rose garden so much, and the roses didn't want to talk, they didn't need any interaction, they just needed care and they were beautiful, and she appreciated beauty. So, you see, in that case, a little comma would be like bringing a little laughter, a little joy into an area where maybe we got too much into work or duty. You see, so that's why you have to approach these things with a little bit of an open mind, take these uh general teachings and uh meditate on them. So I guess I learned a lot of that by being around Swami Kriyananda when I was learning astrology because he was a very original thinker. So Mahadashas are really cool, and uh, once you have the change from one to another and you get adjusted to it, you'll kind of figure it out, but then you'll have a change in the sub-period. See, and then you'll have that same process on a little more subtle level. And if you're an astrologer type, you might enjoy checking out the sub-sub-level and even go deeper. Uh, and you can get really precise with that when you get really confident in your ayanamsha and in the birth time. Because the when you the further you go into sub-sub periods, you need uh accurate birth time, uh, because it'll become down to just a couple days.

SPEAKER_00 53:24

Uh, and uh so uh anyway, you uh think about that.

Preparing For A Challenging Dasha

SPEAKER_00 53:30

You you mentioned earlier about improving the planets or the dasher lord essentially. So if someone is going through or or they have a really tough Dasha coming up, how do you approach that? What can you say to them when you see that there is some potentially challenging karma coming their way? Is there specific things that you recommend based on the chart, remedial measures?

SPEAKER_01 54:02

Yeah, well, that's a great question, and the best part about the question is not if there is a difficult dasha going on, but if you know one is coming. Because that's the future, because that's where astrology will get us in a hundred years, two hundred years. Because let's say in your horoscope there's a potential health problem 10 years from now, and you can see it in the Mahadasha. So, should we wait until it manifests, or should we start working on it 10 years before? You see, and that would be like preventative medicine, except now it would be preventative spirituality. So, one good way to look at it, and this this is my own thought, my own image, but I believe it is very true.

Strengthening Your Aura With Remedies

SPEAKER_01 54:57

Think about meteors coming to the earth every day. How many meteors come to the earth? Every day, oh, no way to count, but certainly it's thousands and maybe more than thousands. And what happens to those meteors is most of them completely burn up before they hit the earth because the earth has an atmosphere, and when those uh meteors enter the atmosphere, there is friction as they go through, and that friction creates heat, and that heat burns up the meteor. If we have a big meteor, uh, it will reduce in size. Most of them completely go poof, they just don't hit the earth. So the analogy to that is each person is like the earth and their atmosphere is their aura. And if you have a big, strong, positive aura, it protects you. If you have a puny little aura, you're like the moon, no atmosphere. And when we look at the moon, what do we see? Craters. And what are those craters from? Those are from comets and meteors that hit the earth, the moon in the early formation period of the solar system. And each one of those craters would have been like a gigantic nuclear explosion. So the problem with a difficult astrology time in our life, let's say uh you know something difficult is happening and you don't feel good. And when you don't feel good, every time your mind says, I don't feel good, your aura gets smaller. Every time you say, I feel great, your aura gets bigger. Uh, every time you say, I don't feel good, your aura gets smaller. Because each one of us is a walking, talking magnet. And the positive pole of the magnet is the third eye, point between the eyebrows, and the negative pole is the uh bottom of your spinal column, the astral spinal column, the coccyx center, or muladhara chakra as it is known. So Saturn is located at the bottom of your spine. Sun is located at the third eye. The sun is always positive and shining. Saturn can be positive if he's well trained. But if Saturn is not well trained, he can think about problems. And when he thinks about problems, he contracts and focuses on those problems. So if you had a problem and you stayed home all day and thought about the problem, by the end of the day, that problem will be like a gigantic problem in your mind because you've been thinking about the problem. So the goal in preparing us for transits or mahadashas, the question is, how do we make our aura big and strong? You see, because when we make our aura big and strong, we have an atmosphere. And when we have an atmosphere and a negative energy enters it, it burns up. And if we're really big and strong, it will completely burn up and you won't even notice it. But if you're still learning how to do this and not great at it, it will reduce in size, you see. So it will go from something that might have been really a big thing to something that becomes smaller thing that you can manage. So that is what remedial measures are. They're not like magic or witchcraft or anything like that. They are methods, how a person can learn to get a stronger, more positive energy around them. And that comes when our energy is upward flowing to the third eye, and that the sun is kind of like the king. And Saturn, who is at the bottom of the spine, is working for the sun. Not working independently for his own worries and fears and anxieties and troubles. When right now the world is very fragile. Uh, I grew up in a time when my country that I was born in was a stabilizing force in the world. And right now, we're kind of the problem. It's like it's very strange reality. Uh, and I grew up in Washington, D.C. And the Washington Post was an international paper. It's probably like living in London, like in the heightened time of England's influence in the world. It was like international, you know. So uh, so what can we depend on in this world that uh is forever? Well, we used to think we could depend on certain things, but right now looking kind of iffy. So remedial measures are many uh in India because they have a very spiritual culture, and they in Indian spirituality that people get up in the morning and they practice devotion to the God of their choice. And it's not like going to church and hearing ideas about truth, it's like getting up in the morning and talking to your father and your mother who loves you, and that you know they love you because you talk to them every day, and there's no insurance company that you think will protect you, there's no government that you think will protect you because there's way too many people for the Indian government to take care of. So it's like their spiritual life is their like their pension, it's their health insurance, it's their life insurance, and it's very real. Just go to India and see a taxicab driver. He'll have on his altar, uh, on his dashboard an altar, because he needs God's grace to survive driving a taxicab in in Calcutta or Mumbai, or it's dangerous. Uh, so anyway, in India they have different ceremonies and pujas to gods and goddesses, but that's hard to hard to share in the West because people don't understand these as much. But

Gems Saturn And Shani Daan

SPEAKER_01 1:01:28

one thing that's very popular is the use of bangles and gemstones, and that is popular in the West. Each planet has a gem, uh, and if you wear that gem, it will strengthen that planet. But you should be careful about that, because gems planets will give the energy of the houses they rule. So we want to wear the gems of planets that wear auspicious houses, usually one, five, and nine. Uh uh maybe a Kendra is possible in some cases, you could consider that. But you wouldn't wear, if you're a Scorpio ascendant, you would not wear emerald. You're the ruler of eighth house and eleventh house. It would give you more energy, but it would be more energy that's not necessarily helpful. You see, so so people love gemstones. You can wear gemstones, and the smart thing to do is see about the most auspicious planets. And if any of your rulers of one, five, and nine are weak, then those would be candidates to support. But there is a tradition in India that I love, and I occasionally recommend to people who seem like they might feel in tune with it, and it's called Shani Dun. And Shani is the name of Saturn in India, S-H-A-N-I. Uh and Dun means offering. And in India, the days of the week are connected to the planets in a live way, not just in an ancient custom way that no one knows like why it happened. Like uh in England, do people think today is Mercury the day, I'll be thinking a lot today, or today is Monday is the day of the moon. That's just from the past sometimes. But in India, they actually think Monday has moon energy, Tuesday has Mars energy, and so on. And so Saturday is the day of Saturn. And if we were a more astute culture, we would take Saturn and say it's a day for atonement, it's a day for purification. Because Saturn is the planet of learn your lessons and improve your karma and grow. He's the planet of you have a duty, do your duty. But in America, we turn Saturday into number one pleasure day. It's like the furthest from what is meant to be. The Jewish religion is the closest, with Saturn is the Sabbath, and on the Sabbath you would do spiritual stuff to clean your heart and mind. But then even they took it so far that you can't push an elevator button or turn on a lamp. Like they they made it sort of extreme. But in India, they believe that Saturn, Shani, is an old man who's walking around like 85 years old, crooked, like he has scoliosis of the spine. And if he looks at you, you will have misfortune. And that's just it. Uh that that's how he has fun. He goes out and gives misery to people. Now that is not true completely, because we just came through 2,400 years of two consecutive Kali Yugas, uh, and that's the dark age. So we have to expect some misconceptions creep into the ancient knowledge when we go through two consecutive Kali Yugas. Uh, Saturn rules your first chakra. The instinct of your first chakra is security. Most people try to get security by getting what they want and possessing it. Then you're kind of like a python, holding holding on to the person or the money or the house, and now you are being contractive. And you're hoping that somehow, if you just have enough possessiveness and contraction, you'll be safe. Except that one thing is the central truth of nature, it always changes. So, how can you get the entire universe to be made out of concrete and never change? It's crazy. So, the path of getting security by attachment is the very popular path that people try to get security, and it leads to suffering. Buddha said it in his teaching: all of life is suffering. He doesn't mean that no one ever had any fun. He means that when you know who you really are as a soul and the bliss that you have, just going, just having your football team win the championship is still isn't that great. It's pretty, it's okay. You see, and he says the cause of suffering is desire. So when Saturn is attachment to your desires, then this mythology of India that he is causing suffering is pretty true. And then we would say that he is the planet of obstacles. You see, and and the irony of it is Saturn will show what you really, really need in your mind psychologically. And the more you need something, the more blocked it gets. You see, so it seems like this isn't right. Like, how could God do it like this? I really, really need this thing. But what people don't understand is their own attachment is blocking them. And that's how Saturn works. And you can only understand it in seeing a very big picture. And that is, he is blocking your getting what you want. Let's say you had a friend from your youthful days when you were a little more wild, and that friend is still wild. And he comes to you to borrow money, and he's still doing the drugs and alcohol thing. And maybe he's progressed into serious drugs. And if you gave him money, you know he's going to go off and get some serious drugs. And that could even get be life-threatening. You know, he could put himself into danger. People do it in addiction. So if you gave him money, he might harm himself. So it would not be kind to him to give him money. You could take him out for a meal, you could give him something, food or something, but don't give him money if he doesn't have wisdom and self-control. So you see, Shani Dhan is a practice done on Saturday to clean your Saturn. And it can be done in two ways: the outside way, which would be service and charity and fasting, and the inside way, which could be more dedicated spiritual practice. And you could do both. So there you are sitting in your house on a Saturday, and someone rings your doorbell, and you go and open the door, and there will be a homeless person, a handicapped person, a sick person, an elderly person, and they will say something like, Shanian, and they're saying, We are Saturn's miserable people. Please give us something, please. Uh, because basically they're saying Saturn's not easy planet, and we haven't figured it out yet. So we are the victims of our own ignorance. Please offer us some light into the darkness. And if you were an observant uh Hindu housewife, uh following tradition, you might have a little food, a little clothing, a few coins. They're not like writing big checks or anything because there's 52 Saturns a week a year. And what they do is they offer some kindness, they offer some support into the darkness. And that would be like suppose there's a little old lady that lives across the street from you, and she's very lonely. And if you ever stop and talk to her, you might get captured for an hour, and she's like very boring. And so most of the time you kind of try to avoid her because you're a busy man and you don't have time to talk to the little old lady across the street for an hour. On Saturday, go over there, knock on her door, and give her a cake and sit and give her your attention. But maybe you want to make an appointment for something else after a half an hour, so you have an excuse to leave, and you go and you offer love or kindness or compassion into the darkness. And that would be your way if uh to make a modern analogy. Let's say you overused your credit cards and you have credit card debt piled up, and there are credit uh you know, debt collectors calling your house, bothering you to get you to pay your debt. Well, that's kind of how Saturn is. Wherever Saturn is in your chart, he's saying you have a debt to pay. Uh, and if you're smart, you will call these debt collectors and you say, I'm gonna take care of my responsibility, but it is not okay for you guys to be calling my house morning, noon, and night. I'm gonna get uh reorganized my debt and I'm gonna consolidate all this and I'm gonna pay it, but you have to leave me alone. So you go out and you say, but to an astrologer, it's not like you're talking to a credit card company, because you can pay your debt with an act of service. You can pay your debt with an act of compassion, you can pay your debt with an act of giving. Uh and on Saturday, if you're going to the coffee shop and there is a panhandler beggar outside the coffee shop, uh, for your sake, give them five pounds. Or if five pounds is too much because you changed your job, give them a pound, give them something, because it's to open your heart. Uh, I have a friend that lives at Ananda Village, I won't use names, but he's one of the most optimistic people I have ever known. He's also very calm. So he's he's like very different from me because I'm on fire and I'm not slow. So he was once one of the leaders of the first attempt at a spiritual center in Italy. He and his wife had a center in Rome, and they were down to like their last I don't know, it was lira in those days, 30,000 lira or something. And his wife is practical at that time was practical, and she got concerned, like we're running out of money. And his answer was, let's go to the movies. You know, like he would not be afraid. You say, like, if we're going down, we're going down optimistic. And to and here he is now, he's a well-known author, and he is one of the most optimistic people I know. So you see, Saturn, what we want to do is expand with positive energy. And on Saturday, I mean, if you were a saint, you would do Shani Dan every day, always. That's what Amachi does when she hugs thousands of people. That's what Kriananda did when he would go all over the world seeing people and teaching and helping. That's what Ananda centers tried to do. When people come at any time for any class, they try to give light into the darkness. But if we as an individual are struggling with that Saturn, who is one of the bigger testing planets, but Mars can give you tests, Rahu and K2 can give you tests. It's not limited to Saturn. But the idea is to give positive energy to those in need. That's the outside way. The inside way is to purify your first chakra and offer the energy up. And Yogananda has in his very profound book, God talks to Arjuna, the SRF version of the Gita interpretation. Yogananda has in that uh in that book some good advice. And my wife and I, we really take one sentence from that as really key for us. And Yogananda says, forget the past, for it is gone from your domain. Forget the future, it is beyond your reach. Control the present, live supremely well now, it will whitewash the dark past and compel the future to be bright. This is the way of the wise. So to a yogi, life is happening right now. The past is just what happened, and there's the associated memories and emotions and thoughts, the future, your dreams, but you are always living right now. And the more that you say, What could I do right now to live supremely well? And Yogananda says the essence of the spiritual path is self-offering. If and he says, Whatever you got, even if you're not like the holy person, let's say you're like upset or having difficulties, but whatever you got, he says, offer that. Because you're offering what you have in that moment up to the higher consciousness, and when you do that, you are living supremely well now. And so what you're doing in this moment is making you future. You see, the problem is most of us are choosing in this moment what our karmic habits are from the past. So we are allowing old tendencies to that we already have created to drive the car. And when we allowed all old tendencies to drive the car, we make the same choices over and over again. And that's when Sriuk Teshwar said the horoscope shows the unalterable past. What we've done is in the history books, it's done, and the probable future. Probable is not certain. So the greatest remedial method is to become more mindful of what you're doing with your energy right now, to offer your energy right now to the divine, and ask the God, the divine, to bless and guide you to do a better version of yourself. You see, like a higher octave of yourself. So Saturn, for example, if he's very strong in our chart, he could give us doubt or he could give us fear. But if you get your energy flowing up the spine more dynamically, he'll give you detachment. And detachment is like letting go of the world to raise your energy to get more clear, and now you're in the world, but not of it. When you were just doubting yourself, you were doubting whether you could be successful in this world. We increase the energy a little bit, and suddenly Saturn says, I went to the market and I got a Teflon outfit. Now I've got no stick clothing, and I can do my Dharma in this world. So, anyway, this this tradition of Shanian, I really

Mantras For Obstacles And Inner Strength

SPEAKER_01 1:17:40

like. And in this Gita book, Master also has a little section called Devas. And Devas is the Indian word for gods, and he tells us which gods and goddesses go for the chakras. And the god, according to Paramansa Yogananda, of the first chakra is Ganesha, and he calls Ganesha the god of success. Well, the planet of the first chakra is Saturn. And Saturn, when we have a fear and attachment, is the planet that creates blocks and obstacles and worry and anxiety. And so, therefore, we can say Ganesha is the one that is very good medicine for Saturn. You see, uh, and Indian religion even says that Ganesha is the remover of obstacles, but they don't tell you it's because he is expanding Saturn. They just say that and they leave it. So Ganesha mantra is a very good mantra for Shani Dun practice, inward mantra. Then you could make friends with Saturn, and you could use Saturn mantra only on Saturdays. You don't do you don't do Saturn mantra every day, you just do it on Saturday. And it's like you're saying to Saturn, teach me your secrets. I know you are an angel, but you're an angel who's hard to get learned what is the gift. So I am asking on Saturday, help me to calm and open my first chakra. And what you will get is stability and focus and calmness. And then the highest octave of Saturn is Shiva. And then a very good mantra for freedom of whatever is the karmic challenge is Mahamritunjaya mantra, the fire ceremony mantra that goes Om Triambakam Yajamahes. It's a very powerful mantra. And so I had an Indian man a few years ago, and his life was okay, but it was kind of mediocre. Uh, and he wanted improvement, and he had a Saturn issue, and because he's Indian, when I made this uh suggestion, he was into it because it's cultural for them. And I said every Saturday, do Ganesha mantra a lot, do Saturn mantra a little, and do Mahamritun Jaya mantra maybe 36 times or uh and and after one year, like he went off, he took that advice, and then like a year later, I get an email. I've been doing religiously every Saturday, and everything is improving. You see, because what he is doing is cleaning his chakra, and when you clean the chakra, it opens, and when it opens, your aura can be your kundaling power starts to rise, your aura gets bigger, and now you have that atmosphere. You see, now you could just put on a gemstone uh and put on a big old gemstone that you think would give you good energy, uh, and then say, why isn't it working? I I spent $3,000 on a gem, and things have improved some because a gemstone can will not do your work of pure, like non-attachment, devotion, all of that. It can give you energy, but you also have to have your mind working in conjunction with it. So, anyway, uh remedies, just regular remedies, wearing colors, wearing gems, they'll help. But if you have an inner practice like this, uh in another big tradition in India, let's say you have Mars problem. Mars is Mars day of the week is Tuesday, and uh Indians for Mars problems would often pray to Hanuman because Hanuman represents the supreme devote of God, and so they will go to Hanuman temples on Tuesdays and Saturdays. So many things can be done, but all of it is about getting a strong upward flow of energy in your chakra system that will give you a bigger aura. And since you're from UK, we could say bigger aura means bigger umbrella. You see, uh, and that and that umbrella protects you, like you can't wait for it not to rain. Sometimes it's just raining for a week. So you get out your big umbrella and you carry on with protection. So we can talk about these things in so many ways, but that's a

How To Connect And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_01 1:22:46

good start.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:46

Yeah, thank you so much. I mean, I've really learned so much, and I was really taking notes with the Saturn remedies because, as you know, Saturn is a big influence in my life. But um, that's been yeah, it's been so enlightening. And if people wanted to reach out to you uh and book a reading or contact you, is there some way they can do that?

SPEAKER_01 1:23:08

Can they contact you and you pass them on?

SPEAKER_00 1:23:10

Yeah, for sure. So uh I'll add my own website and uh my email address underneath the podcast and I can send them your way.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:20

Yeah, and maybe they can go your way first.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:24

Thank you so much for listening. If you're new to Vedic astrology and would like to learn how to read your own birth chart, I've put together a free guide called 10 Simple Steps to Read Your Vedic birth chart. You can find a link in the description below. Enjoy that and see you next time.