#13 - Astrology and Self-Understanding

Completing the journey of the houses, episode 13, connects us the purpose of astrology and why it matters at all. This is the episode that says that astrology is a guidance tool, unparalleled in its power, to help you grow, heal, and become the person you are meant to be. Don't miss this deep conversation that wraps up Dr Craig's declaration about the incredible gift we have in our hands; astrology.  #learnastrology #selfunderstanding #astrology #astrologychart #studyastrology #learnyourchart

Transcript

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Hello and welcome back to Sage of Stars. This is episode number 13, Astrology and Self Understanding. Over the last twelve episodes, I've looked at the twelve houses of astrology. We've explored identity and values, communication and family, creativity and service, relationships and intimacy, purpose and community, and finally compassion with our connection to something larger than ourselves. But this episode is not a review of the houses. Instead, I want to take a step back and ask a different question. Why does any of this matter? What is astrology really offering us? Many of you come to astrology, I think, looking for answers. You want to know what's going to happen next. You want peace of mind that can come from at least a partial certainty about the future, reassurances about relationships or guidance about decisions. Those are very natural questions, human questions. But over the years, I've come to believe that astrology offers us something even more valuable. It offers us an opportunity to understand ourselves. The real power of astrology is that through self-understanding, we learn something about our existence, meaning why we act the way we do, why we attract the patterns we do, and how we can embrace our life the way that it is, or change it if we want to. And when you are internally, when you're internally unified with self-understanding, you can accomplish far more than you imagined. We are not pawns of the planets, they do not dictate our outcomes. We are in a relationship with ourselves, and the planets are guide energies, they are instructors, teaching us through various methods that we need to learn with different tools at their disposal. For instance, Pluto teaches through letting go, or Neptune through reality checks, Uranus teaches through course correction, and Saturn through focus and restraint, while Jupiter teaches through optimism and belief in yourself. But all of these paths are directed towards one thing, no matter what the method, self-growth. And when you see astrology as the guidance tool that it is, you can grow more easily and achieve the things that you want in life because you see the blockages, you understand the patterns, and you heal them by bringing them to the light of awareness, to consciousness, to clarity, and the gift of knowing the direction we're headed in and the purpose for our journey in the first place. Astrology helps us to see what we have difficulty seeing on our own. And wow, that's how we become empowered. When we walked through the 12 houses, we weren't simply learning astrological vocabulary. We were exploring a model of developing a human life. It begins with a simple question like who am I? and then moves to what do I value? What do I think? Where do I belong? What do I create? How do I improve? How do I relate? What gives my life meaning? What can I dedicate myself to? How do I participate in a larger community of humans? And ultimately, how do I develop compassion for experiences beyond my own? These are not personality questions. These are questions about the human experience and this journey that we all take if we stop to examine that those questions, the ones that are generated by the 12 houses of astrology, are the questions that build a meaningful life. Want to build a life where you end up feeling like you actually got there, to the place you were meant to get to, the life with meaning, purpose, and pride in who you are and your accomplishments, then astrology points the way. Not because it's great at predicting, even though it is, but because it's great at showing you your path. That's the first point of power here. Prediction is an ending, a path is your journey. And isn't that what life really is? A journey of discovery and unfolding. It's the miracle. Life keeps moving forward and manifesting every minute, every frame of your life. And being on the right path is important when you want to go to a specific destination. And seeing the path keeps you from getting lost. That's astrology. That's its power and its unbiased light, the light that it shines to show us the way. One of the things I've learned after all these years of working with astrology is that people are kind of unkind to themselves, very judgy. We can do that to others, and we do, but usually it's ourselves that gets the worst of our criticisms. Why we're not further along, why we haven't accomplished more, why we keep repeating the same pattern, how come we haven't changed, or why do we have to be a certain way? But what astrology offers is not an excuse for those judgments or criticism, it offers context, it helps define your personality and show you where the challenges lie and the beautiful good part of us as well. But that context is incredibly healing. When we begin to understand ourselves, we stop seeing our lives as a collection of random events, certainly that we're being subjected to by planetary influence. We start recognizing themes, we begin to see recurring lessons, we begin to understand that those things must be coming from inside of us. The chart reminds us that every one of our lives is complex. Every life contains contradictions. Every life has square energies that must be mastered. Every life has gifts that we can develop and challenges that we have to navigate. And perhaps one of the greatest benefits of self-understanding is that it helps us to develop compassion, not only for ourselves and all of those criticisms that we have, but for others too. Because the more deeply we understand our own fears, disappointments, hopes, and dreams, the easier it becomes to recognize those same experiences in others. In that sense, the journey through the houses ends exactly where it should. It begins with the self, but it ends with our shared humanity. And I think that's pretty significant because the purpose of self-understanding is not self-absorption, it's participation, it's understanding ourselves well enough to engage more fully in our own life with life, with the relationships we have, with the community, and with all of the people who cross our paths and whose paths cross our own. The houses describe a progression through what it means to be human. They provide a framework for understanding our development, what shapes us, what challenges us, what helps us to grow. This is why I like to say that a birth chart is not just a description of a person or even their potential. It's a description of their life. It doesn't tell us everything about who they are, even though it does tell us a lot. It doesn't remove our freedom, that's for sure. We can still make choices to work against our natural inner nature. It does not make choices for us, it does not make decisions, it does not impose karma or any of that. All of that comes from inside of us. The chart shows us the choices we've made. It shows us what we've chosen. And from a truly spiritual perspective, the chart is ours because we chose it. We chose the life it maps out. So it offers us perspective and invites us into a deeper conversation with ourselves about who we are and what we agreed to work on. That's where astrology becomes its most valuable, not when it's attempting to tell us what will happen next, but when it encourages to encourages us to ask better questions. Things that once seemed confusing can start to make sense. If astrology offers us an opportunity not just to glimpse our potential, but to understand something about our existence, that's incredible, then it has a very important and very significant purpose in our lives. The value of the astrology in our chart is not that it predicts or that it predicts every event, the value is that it encourages us to be aware of who we are. And that awareness creates the possibility of a conscious participation in our life, because you can't consciously participate unless you have an awareness of yourself. Listen, take away what can astrology teach me about the human being that I am. For me, that's always been the real purpose of this work. Not prediction, although that's certainly a fun perk. Not certainty. We can never have that. Faith is such a huge part of the journey. It's understanding. An understanding that helps us navigate our lives with greater awareness, greater compassion, and greater appreciation for the path itself. Crazy. Because ultimately the twelve houses are not twelve separate subjects, they are twelve perspectives on life, your life, my life, and the biggest gift of astrology is that it helps us explore who we are, why we're here, and how we can participate more fully in the remarkable experience of being alive. I'm Craig Martin. You've been listening to the Sage of Stars podcast. If you want to know more about what I've been speaking about in this episode, you have the previous twelve episodes to look through because they clearly describe that path to participating more fully in your life. I hope you have a great day. And I'll talk to you soon.