Astrology & Me
The most valuable things I've ever learned about myself I've learned through astrology, which is why I love it and will always stand by it despite the disdain with which it's viewed by my beloved science. (I'm never really sure why science is so bothered by it anyway, given that science views itself as the end-all, be-all of rightness and if that's true then astrology will be proven worthless in its time and that'll be the end of that. Why bother with all the bad-mouthing and putting-down? But science is young and brash and impudent with much to learn; one day it will wise up, and all that is beside the point.) Of the things I've learned, the thing that's been the most useful to me has been understanding that I'm not a good friend.
I'm not the person you're going to call when you want to relax and hang out and chill, not the one with whom you want to share a glass of wine, have a few laughs, and talk about boys. I'm not particularly interested in the minutiae of your day, nor in sharing the details of mine. I did what you did: I woke up, I got up, I eliminated waste, took in fuel, interacted with my loved ones, did what needed doing around my house, went where I had to or wanted to go, in no particular order and give or take whatever else was or wasn't in the cards that day. None of that is of note, and if I find it interesting when you tell me about those parts of your day, it's because I find you interesting, not because I care that little Billy had a bowel movement, no matter in what disgusting or 'hilarious' place or manner it may have occurred. I'll listen and try to respond not because I'm a good friend, but because I'm a decent human being and since it matters enough for you to tell it, it matters to me to try to find something worth hearing in it.
I am, on the other hand, a good manager, which means being a good judge and a constructive critic, and being able to divorce myself from my personal feelings. If you're hoping to get a rise out of me, or offend me, or piss me off, not only will you walk away more frustrated than you must've been in the first place to have a need to create ill feelings in someone else, but you'll have told me a whole hell of a lot about who you are, and it's mostly stuff you probably don't want anyone to know. Fortunately, as a good manager I'm also a good confidant; not only do I have no desire to reveal your secrets (even the ones you don't know you have), I know that doing so would only serve to hamper your chances at success (unless they're the kind of secrets you should be telling).
Don't get me wrong: I'm human and I have limits. There will come a day when I've had enough of your abuse (of me or, more likely, of yourself) and I'll tell you in no uncertain terms that I'm done with it, even publicly and without mercy if that's what it comes down to. When that day comes you'll be glad I'm not your friend, because there'll be no sense of loss, just relief that you no longer have to listen to my pontification and self-righteous musings (as you've seen them, never realizing that most of what I say I say from personal experience; it's not arrogance that makes me say what you don't want to hear, it's the humility of knowing that I wish it'd been said to me at some point even though I know that, like you, I'd've probably chosen to kill the messenger at the time, or of wishing I could've learned what I'm sharing without having to subject myself and those around me to hard and often embarrassing experience). And the worst part will be that I'll be right, and you'll know it. And I'll be done, which you won't realize until the next time we speak and I'm no longer fascinated by your every word, no longer care enough to offer my thoughts (or as you so often said to yourself in the days before I was done, "tell [you] what to do"), when I'm civil and polite but no longer warm or welcoming. Hopefully you won't care. It's time for you to move on anyway.
If you're shaking your head right now and saying, "I don't see that in you at all!" it's because either we haven't gotten there or we really are friends. You're a peer, you take judgement of yourself into your own hands, you hold yourself responsible and mind your own business rather than everyone else's. We probably don't talk much, but when we do it's about what's goin' on in the world, and where we saw God today (or whatever name we give our respective universes), and what we can do to make our worlds a better place, together and separately, or what it is we love about our worlds just the way they are. We love each other, not in sorrow or pity, but just as we love everyone else; for existing, and for being exactly who they're meant to be. Because even when I'm done with you I'll love you. I just might not like you, and there's a very good likelihood you won't like me either, or even love me, which is the easy part when it comes down to it. Even if I do like you I probably won't be friendly with you, partly because it would be hypocritical on my part, and partly because I know that I wouldn't be doing either of us or anyone else any favors pretending that I cared.
It's not easy in a world that makes much of what passes for friendship and sees management as the enemy to accept these things about oneself, or even perhaps to realize them. Astrology gave me what science cannot, because science doesn't yet know how to quantify and classify the personality. Astrology doesn't say, "You're this way because of the stars." It says, "The stars tell us you are this way." God said in Genesis 1:14-15 as interpreted by the scribes of King James:
Astrology, on the other hand, has been using the patterns available to it for 8,000 years of recorded history, and who knows how long before that. It's given birth to astronomy, psychology, and all their subsequent children as numerology birthed mathematics. It's had to be adjusted along the way, of course, because nature, as ordered and orderly as it is, is also fluid, and, like science, is subjective to both the read and the reader: We're human, we can't not see from our own perspective (although some of us are better at that than others).
I hear the argument coming, "But science isn't subjective! It has proofs!" Ever argued with someone with whom you disagreed on a scientific principle? You may say their science is wrong and vice versa - one of you may even be right about that in terms of everything known by a given discipline at a given time - but for each of you your perspective holds no matter what proof is offered in either direction, no matter how right or wrong it might appear to be according to anyone else. I say, "... appear to be," in light of such things as, oh, food and drug recommendations made by scientifically-revered bodies and the regular tendency of those bodies to reverse course on some things while remaining doggedly fixed on ill-advised paths on others, prevalent technologies that were considered impossible a few decades ago, commonly-held truths that were once considered ill-informed or even heretical. What seems absolutely scientifically certain today may by tomorrow be only so much foolishness. Why, even the laws of physics are currently in flux.
So I will continue to love astrology and hug it and squeeze it and call it George for as long as I live. No friend other than the Dudes has had the balls to tell me about myself what astrology says without holding back (also without rancor), not even science - though only because it can't (yet, anyway, not 'til we get a little better at readin' that DNA cipher) - whose whole goal is truth and the exposure thereof. This is only one of the many things this language of the stars has shown me that allow me to make the most and best possible use of myself, and what other purpose is there, really, as long as we're existing in a human form, than to be, fully, who we are?
Moments of Awareness, LLC
I'm not the person you're going to call when you want to relax and hang out and chill, not the one with whom you want to share a glass of wine, have a few laughs, and talk about boys. I'm not particularly interested in the minutiae of your day, nor in sharing the details of mine. I did what you did: I woke up, I got up, I eliminated waste, took in fuel, interacted with my loved ones, did what needed doing around my house, went where I had to or wanted to go, in no particular order and give or take whatever else was or wasn't in the cards that day. None of that is of note, and if I find it interesting when you tell me about those parts of your day, it's because I find you interesting, not because I care that little Billy had a bowel movement, no matter in what disgusting or 'hilarious' place or manner it may have occurred. I'll listen and try to respond not because I'm a good friend, but because I'm a decent human being and since it matters enough for you to tell it, it matters to me to try to find something worth hearing in it.
I am, on the other hand, a good manager, which means being a good judge and a constructive critic, and being able to divorce myself from my personal feelings. If you're hoping to get a rise out of me, or offend me, or piss me off, not only will you walk away more frustrated than you must've been in the first place to have a need to create ill feelings in someone else, but you'll have told me a whole hell of a lot about who you are, and it's mostly stuff you probably don't want anyone to know. Fortunately, as a good manager I'm also a good confidant; not only do I have no desire to reveal your secrets (even the ones you don't know you have), I know that doing so would only serve to hamper your chances at success (unless they're the kind of secrets you should be telling).
Don't get me wrong: I'm human and I have limits. There will come a day when I've had enough of your abuse (of me or, more likely, of yourself) and I'll tell you in no uncertain terms that I'm done with it, even publicly and without mercy if that's what it comes down to. When that day comes you'll be glad I'm not your friend, because there'll be no sense of loss, just relief that you no longer have to listen to my pontification and self-righteous musings (as you've seen them, never realizing that most of what I say I say from personal experience; it's not arrogance that makes me say what you don't want to hear, it's the humility of knowing that I wish it'd been said to me at some point even though I know that, like you, I'd've probably chosen to kill the messenger at the time, or of wishing I could've learned what I'm sharing without having to subject myself and those around me to hard and often embarrassing experience). And the worst part will be that I'll be right, and you'll know it. And I'll be done, which you won't realize until the next time we speak and I'm no longer fascinated by your every word, no longer care enough to offer my thoughts (or as you so often said to yourself in the days before I was done, "tell [you] what to do"), when I'm civil and polite but no longer warm or welcoming. Hopefully you won't care. It's time for you to move on anyway.
If you're shaking your head right now and saying, "I don't see that in you at all!" it's because either we haven't gotten there or we really are friends. You're a peer, you take judgement of yourself into your own hands, you hold yourself responsible and mind your own business rather than everyone else's. We probably don't talk much, but when we do it's about what's goin' on in the world, and where we saw God today (or whatever name we give our respective universes), and what we can do to make our worlds a better place, together and separately, or what it is we love about our worlds just the way they are. We love each other, not in sorrow or pity, but just as we love everyone else; for existing, and for being exactly who they're meant to be. Because even when I'm done with you I'll love you. I just might not like you, and there's a very good likelihood you won't like me either, or even love me, which is the easy part when it comes down to it. Even if I do like you I probably won't be friendly with you, partly because it would be hypocritical on my part, and partly because I know that I wouldn't be doing either of us or anyone else any favors pretending that I cared.
It's not easy in a world that makes much of what passes for friendship and sees management as the enemy to accept these things about oneself, or even perhaps to realize them. Astrology gave me what science cannot, because science doesn't yet know how to quantify and classify the personality. Astrology doesn't say, "You're this way because of the stars." It says, "The stars tell us you are this way." God said in Genesis 1:14-15 as interpreted by the scribes of King James:
Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years…As someone who believes in the scientific laws of nature and physics and who holds dear the proofs thereof, I find it harder to believe that humans are the only thing in the universe for which there aren't clearly-delineated, orderly patterns than I do to believe that nature provides a sort of blueprint, as it does for everything once we learn how to see and understand them. Weather isn't unpredictable; we just haven't quite grasped all the nuances of it's language. The galaxies aren't just hanging out in random spaces; they tell a story of how and when the universe was created but we're only beginning to figure out how to read it. Life forms don't just randomly come together; the DNA tells us everything there is to know about what that life form will look like and probably even how it will act, but again, we're only now starting to decode it.
Astrology, on the other hand, has been using the patterns available to it for 8,000 years of recorded history, and who knows how long before that. It's given birth to astronomy, psychology, and all their subsequent children as numerology birthed mathematics. It's had to be adjusted along the way, of course, because nature, as ordered and orderly as it is, is also fluid, and, like science, is subjective to both the read and the reader: We're human, we can't not see from our own perspective (although some of us are better at that than others).
I hear the argument coming, "But science isn't subjective! It has proofs!" Ever argued with someone with whom you disagreed on a scientific principle? You may say their science is wrong and vice versa - one of you may even be right about that in terms of everything known by a given discipline at a given time - but for each of you your perspective holds no matter what proof is offered in either direction, no matter how right or wrong it might appear to be according to anyone else. I say, "... appear to be," in light of such things as, oh, food and drug recommendations made by scientifically-revered bodies and the regular tendency of those bodies to reverse course on some things while remaining doggedly fixed on ill-advised paths on others, prevalent technologies that were considered impossible a few decades ago, commonly-held truths that were once considered ill-informed or even heretical. What seems absolutely scientifically certain today may by tomorrow be only so much foolishness. Why, even the laws of physics are currently in flux.
So I will continue to love astrology and hug it and squeeze it and call it George for as long as I live. No friend other than the Dudes has had the balls to tell me about myself what astrology says without holding back (also without rancor), not even science - though only because it can't (yet, anyway, not 'til we get a little better at readin' that DNA cipher) - whose whole goal is truth and the exposure thereof. This is only one of the many things this language of the stars has shown me that allow me to make the most and best possible use of myself, and what other purpose is there, really, as long as we're existing in a human form, than to be, fully, who we are?
Moments of Awareness, LLC
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