Readings (Part II); the Importance of Being a Mess

I’ve decided to offer written astrology readings in response to specific issues and questions.

The more information you give me, the more specific I can be. Job, career, relationships, house-moving, impossible parent, horrible transit, life falling apart…. I’ll write about half a page. Price £30, or £20 if you’re hard up. My email address is on my profile on the right of the page.

It’s not my job to make decisions for people, but I might be able to point you in a useful direction. Nor is it my job to predict the future in a definite sort of way. But I’m happy to be nebulous!

I’ve been thinking how useful it can be to feel like you’re a mess and you don’t know what to do about it. That’s when a lot of change can happen, and often does happen, though maybe over a period of years.

There’s the light and the dark. The light is following your deeper interests, whatever it is that gives you joy. It is also doing the things that make you happy in an ordinary kind of way, and feeling it’s OK to do that – which, remarkably, people don’t always feel.

But I think it’s also important that there are periods where it all stops making sense, where much of what gave your life meaning no longer seems to. And you’re scrabbling around feeling like this retard who can’t make their life work, unlike all the jolly, directed people up there above your private underworld.

As an astrologer, you’re more likely to encounter people when things aren’t working, rather than when they are. And you can re-assure them that no, they are not a retard, it’s a normal and often necessary experience that gives depth to your life.

‘Spiritual’ paths are often presented in terms of movement towards the light. Towards ecstatic experience, union with God, your original self etc. But I think if you’re a teacher (which I’m not), your real job is often being around for people when their life doesn’t add up anymore. And helping them focus on finding their own way through it, rather than latching on to someone else's 'answers'.

It’s very easy for ‘spiritual’ teachers to stop their own underworld journeys, or even never to have been there properly in the first place. You can see it in them: the unprocessed scripts, classically the desires for power or sex or wealth or success, running alongside the undoubted gifts and insights and probably charisma. These people are betrayers. Their 'rightness' or their success is more important to them than you are. Ironically, betrayal can be what is needed, it can pull someone's world apart in a way that is ultimately useful.

I'm sceptical that teachers with followings can ever take people beyond a basic level. The next level, after you've heard what they have to say, is often claiming your power back by leaving! Followers create a collective projection and a handing over of power which even a good teacher can do little about. You see people hanging around for years, trying to advance themselves, when their next real step is actually to leave.

I think we often only end up an underworld mess if there is conflict in us, if there is a deeper element that goes no, I can’t live like that. You see many people happily leading their lives from relatively narrow motives or worse, but it doesn’t bother them.

They appear successful, and it’s we who can’t live like that who can appear to be the ones with ‘problems’. But as is so often the case, the reality is the opposite of what it appears to be. And part of what gives you depth in this sort of situation is that you are not having the approval of the world to make you feel OK about who you are. You have to find it for yourself, independently. But the confidence you emerge with is real, it stands on its own.