What Are We Evolving Towards?

A recent book review in the Times was discussing the de-skilling taking place in Modern Society.  It occurred to me that there is a black hole operating here (a place we get stuck where reality does not meet the picture we have of how it should be).  I regularly hear people decrying the changes that are taking place in society.  The sense is that the world is going to hell in a handbasket with the breakdown of communities, increased violence, focus on electronic communication as against personal interaction, obesity etc.  The list is endless and there are overwhelming amounts of people who clearly believe in the truth of these pictures.  Yet is this the reality?  Whilst we were on holiday in France, a friend of my son’s that we had invited along with us, was reading a book called The Spirit Level.  The thesis of the book was that inequality was bad for society and that equal societies were always more effective.  This thesis was extended to all areas of life.  Yet, I noticed that there were certain widely held beliefs that were referred to as evidence of this effect.  One was the increase in violence and disaffection of youth.  As someone who has been a student of the I-Ching for many years, I am wary of those holding strong pictures about how society should be.  The Tao-Te-Ching famously says “He who knows does not speak, he who speaks does not know”; when we hold strong models and pictures about how Life should be we create a closed heart which ceases to feel the flow of child like wonder and love that an open heart experiences.  The danger is also that we fail to experience the reality of life but filter it through our expectations and assumptions.  The beauty of the Tao-Te-Ching’s advice is that even my perspective here is undermined since in writing this article I am expressing my own view on how we should be approaching life – so we are all undone. I therefore put my views forward with the strongest conviction that I might or might not be proved right in the fullness of time.

 Since the myths or beliefs that pervade our view are so strong, they become almost invisible and are re-inforced by repeated reference.  We all know that we are living in a society where people are becoming alientated and increasingly violent, where communities are breaking down.  Or do we?  The facts are always valuable so far as they can be ascertained to help us challenge our beliefs.  The facts on violence are that violent deaths per head of the population globally were in severe decline throughout the 20^th Century and this has accelerated further in the 21^st Century.  We are becoming increasingly less violent.  What is intriguing here is that since the population is becoming increasingly urban, it would suggest that becoming more numerous and living more closely together is decreasing our preponderance for violence, not something we might expect.  So where does this overwhelming sense that we are all going to hell in a handbasket come from?  I wonder if it comes from the fear of change.  The recognition that we are not in control.   I was struck by the fact in a recent newspaper article the death of a woman whilst skiing was described as a tragedy.  The woman was an apparently healthy forty-five year old who had died from a heart attack whilst on a chair lift.  The tenor of the article was that this somehow should not have happened.  Indeed death is continually described in newspapers as a tragedy.  What makes death so shocking for us, is it reminds us of the fact that we are not in control and that change is inevitable in ways which we do not necessarily want and cannot always predict.  I suspect that it is this which creates the perception that the world is on a course of decline towards some terrible end.  We feel impotent in the face of a world that is so much bigger than we are and over which we can have so little influence.  Yet paradoxically this very element that makes many feel that we are slipping backwards in terms of evolution is the very thing that is fuelling evolution.  Without death there can be no evolution.  Death, both physically and psychologically is often shocking and upsetting.  I am at the age now where my children are old enough to be leaving home.  The same is true for many of my peers.  Someone I was coaching recently reflected back to me that a relationship that had been extremely close over the years they had worked with the individual was now changing.  The person I was coaching felt somehow guilty about this and said the other person described it in terms of betrayal.  Yet really the betrayal was generated by a change in the person I was coaching in that they were opening their heart to other people in the organisation and becoming less identified with the clique of their own department.  The sense of betrayal on the part of their colleague was really saying do not change or grow.  Since they had responsibility for developing this individual as part of their team, we talked about the role of betrayal in terms of evolution.  I have mentioned elsewhere that my son is currently abroad in France for the first time.  As I pointed out to the person I was coaching, my son has to betray me if he is going to grow and become an independent adult.  Similarly I have to betray him, if he is to evolve; I have to push him out of the nest.  It was upsetting for both of us – him leaving home behind and me leaving my son behind but without this “death” how can there be evolution?  It is tempting then to look back on the past through rose-tinted spectacles, to feel sentimental for a past that perhaps never existed.  Thus we watch Jane Austen films and pine for the nobility, simplicity and civility of such times.  Yet even Austen herself was writing through rose-tinted spectacles about a time twenty to thirty years prior to the time of writing.  There is little mention or recognition on our part of the fact that slavery was an accepted fact, that disease and poverty were rife or that children were used and regularly died supplying gunpowder for cannons on board naval ships.


Given all of this, it is difficult to separate out and understand what we should be working to change - because it is an old unconscious way of acting that we need to evolve beyond - and what is misplaced nostalgia about the past.  With this in mind, I want to look at how we see the modern world and where we might be evolving since this gives us a lens through which to decipher this.  So back to the original article about de-skilling; it is clear that humans are changing.  Physiologically, our bones are becoming more gracile since we do not need the bone density to support muscles at the level that we did when we were hunter gatherers.  The article also referred to de-skilling generally.  It is clear, given the increasing mechanisation of our lives, that part of our evolution is away from manual activities to more cerebral ones.  It occurred to me during the late eighties and nineties, with divorce rates rising and an increase in redundancies that something was shifting in terms of the way we understood the concept of work and relationships.  I was conscious that the relationship of loyalty between employer and employee was breaking down – on both sides.  What might this mean?  What I realised was that in the past individuals were defined by their physical capacity for work.  Many jobs that had required physical effort were now being mechanised and, increasingly, computerised.  This meant that the need for physical labour had reduced significantly.  There was a movement away from the manufacturing sector with a huge growth in the services sector.  We were less concerned with earning our money through serving each other’s physical survival needs and more concerned with serving each other personally.  Indeed, much of the manufacturing sector does not produce goods that are essential to our needs but rather add to our lifestyle.  There was a growth in the whole notion of work-life balance.  It dawned on me that what people had become loyal to was their career.  Previous to the nineties, the concept of career had much less currency than the term job.  A job is about economic survival; a career has a very different notion which carries the sense of personal fulfilment and achievement.  As a Human Resources manager during this period, it was clear to me that a fundamental change was taking place.  Individuals were becoming loyal to their own development not the organisation.  The psychological contract had changed to one where the individual would be loyal to the organisation as long as it provided opportunities to grow and develop and the organisation would remain loyal to the individual as long as they grew and developed their skills and abilities.  It is easy now to forget how radically the work place has changed in the last twenty to thirty years, but there really has been a seismic shift and I think we have changed the concept of work from being a physical activity to a mental one.  Work now means work on ourselves to develop our potential – to become more conscious.

When my friend Chrissy asked the I-Ching what we were doing here it gave her the hexagram 14  Possession in Great Measure and 2 lines from Hexagram 18 Work on What has been Spoiled.  Possession in Great Measure is about consciousness and the lines from Hexagram 18 were the first line:

            Six in the beginning means
            Setting right what has been spoiled by the father
            If there is a son,
           No blame rests upon the departed father.
           Danger.  In the end good fortune.

 Rigid adherence to tradition has resulted in decay.  But the decay has not yet penetrated too deeply and so can still be easily remedied.  It is as if a son were compensating for the decay his father allowed to creep in.  Then no blame attaches to the father.  However, one must not overlook the danger or take the matter too lightly.  Only if one is conscious of the danger connected with every reform will everything go well in the end.

This suggests that the game of life we are playing is set up to be spoiled but that our work is to take responsibility for this and put it right.  In order to do this, we have to work to become more conscious, indeed the fact it is spoiled creates the conditions for us to become more conscious.  The next line she threw was the fourth line:

            Six in the fourth place means:
            Setting right what has been spoiled by the father.
           One meets with praise.

 This shows the situation of someone too weak to take measures against decay that has its roots in the past and is just beginning to manifest itself.  It is allowed to run its course.  If this continues humiliation will result.

It is clear from this line that the I-Ching is saying that if we do not take responsibility for sorting out the challenges life brings to become more conscious the decay is perpetuated (until we do?).  This very much ties in with the notion of karma.  Although, I must admit that I am wary of much of the unknown mysticism that has become attached to this term.  It is impossible to know whether there is such a thing as past lives or re-incarnation (there may or may not be, but we do not know).  I do not subscribe to the notion of being good because of some unknown future reward, but rather because it is important here and now.  One has only to look at the situation with Israel and Palestine to see the dangers of not putting things right at the beginning or tackling decay and instead allowing it to run its course.


So I think that we are bringing a different consciousness to our concept of work.  If, according to Chrissy’s pattern, Chiron rules Virgo and the asteroids (fragments that did not coalesce into a planet – permanently fractured and not whole – very much Virgo detail and Chiron woundedness), then the discovery of Chiron in the late 1970s would have coincided with a shift in our understanding of work and a move towards a service (a very Virgo word) based economy.  Indeed, the facts about the nature of jobs that I saw presented some four or five years ago, showed that two-thirds of jobs that are advertised did not exist ten years ago.  We have had an explosion of growth and creativity with a potential in the future for each person to find their own personal expression of work – their own particular work to do on what has been spoiled.

So perhaps our de-skilling, is really re-skilling.  We are evolving towards a more cerebral life as our physical bodies become less important to the work we are doing.  With our move to the age of Aquarius it feels collectively as if we are teenagers and so challenging the received notions of our parents.  With this in mind, I wondered whether the high rates of divorce were representative of this change, ie. that staying in a marriage simply because it was the right thing to do was not good enough, each individual is challenging this for themselves to discover the value of loyalty and work on relationships for themselves consciously as a choice.  There is very much a sense of individuals wanting to test things out for themselves rather than simply accepting the wisdom of others.  Thus all previous structures and forms are being challenged and thrown out.  It suggests to me that we are shifting towards an era of individual responsibility and consciousness.  This has some consequences which are uncomfortable; an internet filled with everything one can imagine including pornography and all sorts of wierd and wonderful cults, niches etc.  Yet the explosion in creativity is also quite incredible. Each individual is determined to find their own expression and, interestingly, with the internet now, each individual is able to find people who share their interest or approach.  Trying things and learning for ourselves is a slow process, filled with pitfalls yet it is the only route to consciousness.  Even religion, as one religious leader recently complained, has become a do-it-yourself affair operating in people's homes!

I have mentioned before that Chrissy prompted me to consider the internet as a large brain that we evolving on a planetary scale.  For many this is scary and there is a desire to label such things as facebook, television, computer games, as dangerous.  Yet this is symptomatic of the fear of change.  These things are neither good nor bad, they are simply different.  How humans use them determines whether they are used for negative or positive ends.  The ability to interact with others and live in a more transparent way strikes me as having a value.  I wonder if we are evolving towards a global community, a global brain to which we are all connected?  Certainly it seems that with the internet, the need for individuals to retain vast quantities of data or to travel the world to make contact with others is receding.  I wonder if we will laugh in years to come at the way we now fly all around the world, instead of connecting virtually with each other?  The brain has played a fundamental role in our evolution, what if we are now evolving a collective brain which will help us evolve to a new level?  As someone who is now 46, the idea that my body will be less important in the future and that I can connect with friends and colleagues world-wide who share my interests is a reassuring thought, rather than a sign of our moral and physical turpitude.  The end is of course is always nigh, but then so is the beginning - alpha and omega are two faces of the same moment of now in which we all reside.  It is easy to judge the world and its changes, to see ourselves as unnatural but it is driven by fear, a fear of change.


I do not think we are evolving away from nature, I think evolution is our nature.  I leave the last word to the Tao Te Ching:

Do you think you can take over the universe and improve it?
I do not believe it can be done.

The universe is sacred.
You cannot improve it.
If you try to change it, you will ruin it.
If you try to hold it, you will lose it.

So sometimes things are ahead and sometimes they are behind;
Sometimes breathing is hard, sometimes it comes easily;
Sometimes there is strength and sometimes weakness;
Sometimes one is up and sometimes down.

The master sees things as they are,
Without trying to control them.
He lets them go their own way
And resides at the centre of the circle.

Does our financial system need to change?

In discussions with friends recently the question of our financial system needing to change has come up and the fact that a system that produces such vast inequality between rich and poor cannot continue.  We were discussing particularly capitalism and whether this was now outmoded and needed to change.  Certainly this seems to be a prevalent perspective, even among the rich.  Yet, I question whether this is right.  The reason for this comes down to my experience in business working on change programmes and also being Chairman of the local charity that I have been involved in.  The reason that I question this is not because I am attached to Capitalism per se, or that I am enamoured of the gap between rich and poor, but rather because I question the way that change really takes place.  I notice that, as a coach, organisations and individuals place a huge amount of emphasis on actions that will create change.  The want concrete actions.  Similarly, much time in business is spent designing new systems and structures whenever change is felt to be necessary.

At an individual level, I have noticed that while everyone suggests that where people are stuck or not acting the way they or others want, they should have a plan and actions to take to address the behaviour my experience is that this does not work.  Instead my experience has been that if they shift their awareness or understanding of the situation, ie. if they are able to generate a new insight then they automatically change the way they behave or act.  Thus, when working with individuals, I focus on changing the way they see things rather than on what different actions they are going to take.  I trust from experience that if they see their situation differently then they will act differently without any need for me to change their approach.  I recognise that on occasions, new structures or actions can shift things, but interestingly this is not because of the structures themselves but rather because they are new or produce new ways of thinking for the individual.

The I-Ching makes a distinction between the Creative and the Receptive.  The Creative is the invisible, creative force, the Receptive, is the receptacle of form in which this creative force can take shape.  Thus yin and yang are complimentary polarities which bring forth change in the world.  In Physics terms they are mass and energy and their constant dance of creation.  In astrological terms it is Saturn and Uranus.  In terms of thinking it is the difference between mind (the metaphysical conception which contains our consciousness) and brain (the physical construction in which mind is contained).  It is clear that these two are so interdependent that they are almost the same thing, as the symbol of the tao aptly portrays (and as astro-physics recognises by talking about space-time).  Yet the I-Ching is very clear in stating that the Creative or Yang must lead.  It became very clear to me from experience that where structure led in organisational change the change was rarely successful.  Where the focus was on a shift in thinking or understanding the change tended to be much more successful.  Thus the real issue is about changing our thinking.  Any system we design that does not involve a change of attitude or thinking will not shift anything.  Thus the issue is not capitalism but greed and instinct.  If we were all to change our attitude or thinking then it is likely that we could make almost any system work.  Where we put all our efforts into changing the system it re-inforces the notion that the issue is the system and it allows an abnegation of responsibility which dooms any change.  Any system designed without a change of thinking will end up repeating the issue.  As Einstein correctly noted "you cannot solve the problems of today at the level of thinking that created them".  In this respect it is interesting to watch the relationship between Aquarius and Leo.  It takes insight (Leo) in order for society (Aquarius) to change its thinking and interestingly this can only happen at an individual level - ie. if one of us can shift our consciousness or thinking it allows the possibility for all of us to do so.  When Coperincus postulated that the earth revolved around the sun he did not seek to add to or change the elaborate systems that had grown up to explain the anomalies of the geo-centric world view.  Yet, the systems and structures for astronomy changed radically once this shift to seeing the universe from a helio-centric point of view had taken place.


What does this mean in terms of the current global crisis?  It means that this crisis is provoking us to change our thinking and deepen our understanding and that is the important work.  Once our thinking and understanding changes then the systems will automatically shift.  So the issue is not capitalism but rather, I suspect, good old fashioned greed and fear.

The Astrological 12th House

A recent argument/development between my wife and me, arbitrated skilfully by Chrissy and the I-Ching revolved around the question of dependence and gratitude.  My wife has a passion for horses which has played out all her life.  She had her first horse at a very young age and continued with them to the point now where she has over twenty horses.  The difficulty with horses is that they are expensive.  When she was young her step father paid for her horse.  This was somewhat uncomfortable and involved my wife on occasion taking money from his wallet without his knowledge.  When she was old enough she found a Saturday job which helped her fund her animals - at the time she also had numerous cats, a dog, over twenty rabbits, forty mice and a crow, not to mention guinea pigs etc.  When I first met my wife she was working as a teacher and supporting Whisper plus another horse which she had on loan.  The result of this was that she was heavily in debt.  In order to come and live with me in London, my wife had to sell her beloved horse Whisper; it was a close run choice.  I suspect she still wonders about whether it was the right one.  The issue revolved around the right relationship between us and the dangers for the future of our relationship.  If my wife took from me to support her love of horses that was fine, provided that I didn't give more than I felt happy giving.  At the same time, if my wife took from me but resented her lack of independence then that was dangerous for both our hearts and for the relationship.  It is easy to confuse this issues with notions about the relationship between men and women but I think this is a red herring since the context for this was friends where the the roles were reversed between the husband and wife and he was the one in the dependent position but resenting the dependence.  I think it is more connected to the 12th house since in both cases the Sun is in the 12th house.

In discussing this issue and noting the fact that my wife has the Sun in the twelfth house, it became clear that the 12th house (and perhaps Neptune generally) seems to be about dependence.  In many ways the 12th house represents our dependence in general on the universe.  This brings up the notion of how to deal wisely with what the 12th house represents in our lives and particularly the notion of gratitude.  My wife with her Sun in the 12th house has worked in Mental institutions (very much associated with the 12th house) and currently with Autistic children, with whom she has tremendous success and an incredible gift for helping them.  In turn the people who come to Heartshore Stables are in many cases unable to afford the help needed so my wife works pretty much full-time without earning anything and I subsidise the venture.  My ability to do so is predicated on my own 12th house.  I have Mercury in Sagittarius right on the 12th house cusp and the realisation that the 12th house was about dependency caused me to reflect on this and realise that my own ideas and livelihood owe a massive debt and dependency to Chrissy in particular (as well as others such as Milton Erickson, Tim Galwey etc.).  Were one to trace it, I suspect that one would be able to see that this web of dependency probably links everyone together and indeed is inherent in the nature of the 12th house as the source or womb for all of us (cf. The Golden City by Chrissy Philp where she posits Sagittarius and Pisces as constituting the complimentary connection The Source).  In I-Ching terms this is the Well (according to Chrissy's Pattern of the elements, Pisces is the mutable expression of water and the trigrams that make up the Well, K'an and Sun, represent Cancer and Scorpio which together become Pisces) the universal flow of goodwill or love which nourishes us all.

Gratitude has become a somewhat outmoded notion these days with the focus being on more Aquarian traits of "rights" and independence.  Nobody likes to think of themselves as dependent.  There is very much a sense of individualism and people dislike the notion that they might be indebted to others.  The danger with this is that it means that we take while resenting those from whom we take.  I wonder if the lesson of the 12th house is about gratitude.  It is interesting that the stables we run is fueled by goodwill and gratitude and I feel it is my privilege to support it.  When we discussed this among friends, there were some uncomfortable discussions yet everyone recognised the pattern.  There was a discomfort about the notion of gratitude because it implied dependency.  Yet to give to someone without them feeling grateful endangers the person giving and the person receiving since it closes both their hearts.  Since it is clear that we are all dependent then perhaps it is our opportunity to be grateful to those on whom we depend. 

Perhaps there is an even greater subtlety here.  In learning about keeping my heart open I discovered paradoxically that it was not about being giving and loving and open hearted, rather it was about preventing my heart becoming closed - not resenting people.  In learning to keep my heart open to everyone, I had to learn how not to give.  My children have become quite brilliant at working on this with me.  If they ask me for a lift or to do something for them, they now regularly ask me if I can do it without resentment.  They know that often my default position will be to say yes but they also know that the danger is that if they ask too much of me, there will be a price of irritability or resentment later when I feel I have given too much (sadly they see this much more clearly than me and I am indebted to them for their insight!).  Thus I have had to learn to test myself each time I go to do something for someone, to ask myself whether I can do it without any expectation of any return in any form and whether it will close my heart down to do it.  If I clear the kitchen and then the children come in and mess it up or are bad tempered, the danger is that if I have done something for them my rebuke is loaded with the resentment of my disappointed expectations.  If I have done it freely knowing that I have chosen to do it only for myself then the action is done cleanly.  Perhaps the same applies to taking; that we need to be equally careful that where we take, we ask ourselves whether we can do so with genuine gratitude so that even if the person we are taking from subsequently annoys or frustrates us it does not negate our gratitude.  It would be interesting to think what the world might be like if our primary focus was gratitude rather than our "rights".

Since the 12th house is traditionally associated with Institutions such as hospitals and prisons, it makes me wonder whether the lesson here is also about dependency and gratitude.  Certainly hospital is an example of dependency, and for most in jail, there is some sense that the laws of dependency (or independence) have been violated and they have taken without sensitivity to those they were taking from (in terms of violence, corruption, robbery, murder etc.)

Astrology and the I-Ching

Both Astrology and the I-Ching have played dominant roles in my life for the last twenty-six years.  I was first introduced to Astrology by my mother’s interest back in the late 1970s.  We used a starter kit to work out the family’s charts and it is difficult now for me to look back and separate my knowledge now from what I actually believed or knew then.  I find that my memory is that I always knew my chart and those of others to some extent.  I think I did always have a background awareness but by the time I was at University I was a staunch sceptic in terms of Astrology and had bought into the cultural norm that it was nonsense.  At university I met two friends, Rhodri and Johanna, who introduced me to both Astrology and the I-Ching (and subsequently to my friend Chrissy).  Whilst I still expressed some scepticism – or at least ambivalence, their insights into my personality and, having given them my parents charts, their insights into them was so accurate it was impossible to deny the validity of Astrology.  After a year or so, I gave in.  Where it was particularly valuable to me was in describing the different elements of my personality.  Having someone describe accurately the feeling of my Cancer moon with it’s sensitivity, need for close relationships and it’s difficulty being away from home for the first time, in contrast to my Sun exactly conjunct the ascendant in Sagittarius with it’s confident and independent exterior was such a valuable insight.  At the time I was struggling with relationships.  My friends said that it looked like I needed a lot of freedom in relationships.  No, no, I protested, I tend to attract women who need a lot of freedom; I am very committed in relationships.  They asked me how long my relationships had lasted.  I had to admit that the majority were around two to three weeks but I ended them because the other person was not committed.  They could not help laughing.  I then pointed out that my last relationship had lasted a year and a half, which did make them consider my point about commitment until I admitted that I had spent over 4 months of it travelling and she had been away for another 4 months of it.  Astrology described so accurately my inner experience and how people were reacting to me.  My doubts evaporated and I became fascinated with learning more about myself and others.  Since most people are fascinated by themselves it was not difficult to learn.

However, whilst I was busy learning about Astrology and gaining insights, I was still troubled about what to do with these insights.  They gave me such rich information but they didn’t provide me with insight on what to do about it.  Thus came the second part of my friends’ gift: introducing me to the I-Ching.  If Astrology was the illumination that suddenly allowed me to read the road signs of this journey of life I was on, then the I-Ching was a perfect driving instruction manual.  Astrologers as a group tend to be more like academics than the occultists that many would like to believe them (although I am conscious that over the last 15 years in my work, those who don’t know their chart or brand it rubbish, have become the rarity.  Most people have had some contact with Astrology and most, interestingly, are respectful of the insight it provided).

The Delphic oracle’s lietfmotif was “Know thyself”.  If you want to do so, then I have yet to find any tool to rival Astrology in providing this insight.  However, as I discovered studying for my diploma from The Faculty of Astrological Studies, knowledge of Astrology was not synonymous with wisdom.  I remember my wife attending classes and being stunned by a brilliant astrologer who advised someone with Venus in Sagittarius that they were bound to want affairs and find it difficult to commit to relationships so they had better have affairs since they needed freedom but not tell their partner!  I was amazed that an astrologer could be advocating such an unenlightened perspective.  I had associated astrology with wisdom (not unusual perhaps given my preponderance of Sagittarius) yet it became clearer and clearer to me that Astrology was a phenomenal tool but only a tool.  This tool provided objective information about individual personalities and about the universe and how it was working.  Yet it’s value as a tool was entirely dependent on how skilfully or wisely it was used.

During my first year of consulting the I-Ching I asked about the relationship I was in.  We had been together a year and a half and I wanted out.  My girlfriend was short, attractive and we got on well together but having lots of Taurus she was beginning to put on weight and being so Sagittarian I wanted a girlfriend that was tall, athletic and youthful.  I did not want things like getting fat, getting old etc.  Besides, my girlfriend did not fully share my interest in Astrology and the I-Ching.  It seemed time to leave; yet my heart could not quite justify it.  On consulting The I-Ching it bizarrely told me that I should commit myself to the relationship and have a long-term perspective.  It had clearly made a mistake so I asked it again.  I received almost exactly the same answer! (I ought to point out here that I believe the I-Ching to have a well-developed sense of humour.  One time when I received a hexagram with 4 moving lines in which I did not understand, I consulted it again to ask it to clarify exactly what it meant and it gave me the same 4 lines and hexagrams! On another occasion I was building a stone wall but could not find enough stone or the right type.  I was so blocked and frustrated that I went into the house to consult the I-Ching and I threw the third line of Oppression (47) which says “One is oppressed by stone”).  The advice bemused me but I had learnt to respect the I-Ching by then.  I thought carefully about what I had thrown and I realised that I was going to reach this point in whatever relationship I had, so perhaps now was the time to learn to get past my romantic mind-pictures.  I committed myself to the relationship fully in order to learn to give up on illusions about romance and commit to something real.  The I-Ching was pleased with me.  My girlfriend on the other hand was stuck in a black hole where she was happy with the relationship but worried that since it was her first real relationship (we were only 19 when we got together), what if she might be missing something? She decided to end the relationship.  She came back to me within days to say she had was caught and perhaps she did not want to end it, but she was still vacillating and stuck so I gave her permission to go and be free.  What I realised was that I had left the relationship cleanly, without messes or a responsibility for hurting someone.  I also realised that I was ready for this stage when it occurred in my next relationship.  I had learnt to move well in the way that the I-Ching teaches.  Knowing enough astrology to see that I had a Sagittarian desire for a tall slim, youthful looking wife and that my Sagittarian personality would probably always be dissatisfied in relationships was a valuable insight.  How to deal with this and to be in the I-Ching’s language “free of blame” was the necessary wisdom to complement the Astrology.

The I-Ching teaches that inhibition is the path to freedom.  A number of psychotherapist friends of mine tell me that this is dangerous and that you should get everything out, yet learning as a student from my friend Chrissy she made a valuable distinction that is now very much part of the way that Emotional Intelligence has moved.  Chrissy distinguished between repression, the denial of an emotion and inhibition, where we feel and acknowledge the emotion but choose not to act on it if it is not appropriate.  It is interesting that the current research on the brain from people like Ian McGilchrist (The Master and his Emmisary) and a recent article in the New Scientist, both talk about the role of the forebrain in creating our ability to be aware and also to inhibit our emotions.  What is fascinating here is that on Chrissy’s pattern the forebrain is ruled by Aquarius and Saturn – Awareness and Inhibition.  It is extra-ordinary that Ian McGilchrist has reached the same conclusion from an academic and scientific background.

So, back to me (given I am the Sun rising in Sagittarius, I rarely stray far from this fascinating topic!), having split up with my girlfriend what happened next and why was this so valuable?  What happened next was that I decided to give up on relationships and I set about missing the boat.  Given that I have been a student of Chrissy’s for twenty-five years now, I must acknowledge my debt to her role here.  It was Chrissy that taught me the I-Ching and furthered my interest in Astrology; she also had a profound influence in teaching me how to take a wise approach to life.  In spending two years missing the boat, I was practising giving up the inaccurate mind-pictures or mental models that I had of the world.  I stopped watching television, I meditated a lot and I sorted out my finances.  I also gave up on career.  I realised that I did not really know how to approach any of these areas and I realised that the models the world presented, which largely revolved around missing the boat were confusing and unhelpful.  Chrissy’s advice was that it was not worth worrying about getting a girlfriend since Life already knew when and if that would happen.  I notice that most people are busying trying to get somewhere or get something in their lives; whereas my experience has been that this is an illusion and that we are not in control of such things.  Whilst waiting patiently and giving up on the world, I came to realise that the reason I was having difficulty in friendships and relationships was down to my Sagittarian shadow which had such high expectations about the type of girlfriends and friends that I should have.  Sagittarius’ shadow is the groupie who has to be where it is at and have the trendiest friends and girlfriends.  I asked Life, if it were possible and part of my journey, if I could have a very Cancerian and committed wife, who shared my interest in Astrology and the I-Ching.  Then I sat down and practiced waiting and being content.  The first thing that happened was that I met my life long friend Sam.  Sam was a jewel, but I had to give up my Sagittarian shadow to see that.  After two years, I met my wife (a woman with the Sun, Ascendant, Mercury and Venus in Cancer and a Taurus moon).  She did not fit the Sagittarian bill but I learnt to inhibit my Sagittarian (and Uranian) dissatisfaction and after twenty-two years together I realise that it was perhaps the single most rewarding and valuable thing I did in my life.  What is interesting is that the Sagittarian side of my personality expresses itself (and Jupiter in Gemini in the 7^th) through travelling around the world engaging with people on wisdom and the I-Ching.   When we inhibit our personalities from expressing at a more instinctive level we allow them to express in more evolved ways.  This is not to say that the emotions we feel change but that we are less attached to acting on them.  We can acknowledge our jealousy, rage, desire for power but not act on it.  I think the great gift of Astrology is paradoxical, that it gives us the ability to separate our consciousness from our personality and to have the freedom not to act on its impulses and identify so strongly with it.  The I-Ching guides us on how to move wisely so that we can be free of blame, of creating messes and hurting others.  The combination of the two seems the most powerful axis I know of for living in an enlightened way.

Thus for me, Astrology plays a key role in keeping my heart open because it allows me to identify and separate the elements of my personality from my consciousness.  It also gives me greater compassion towards others.  When I worked at Ernst & Young I worked as part of a team of senior HR managers.  One of my closest friends worked with me.  We also worked together with a friend who became jealous of our closeness and in revenge she told our director that we were plotting to make decisions about the department thus undermining him.  This was not true and my close friend was so hurt and angry that he transferred to another part of the firm.  He was bemused that I was able to still relate to and keep my heart open to our friend who had done this to us.  I thought about why that was the case and I realised that it was down to Astrology.  I knew she was Sun-Mars conjunct in Taurus opposite Neptune in Scorpio and that it was a repeating pattern for her that she would compete and then when she felt unable to compete she would undermine people through "black magic" (passing on negative, heart-constricting gossip).  I recognised that I could be anyone, I could probably even be a chair and she would act the same way, she was simply playing out her chart; in many ways it was not personal even though it felt so.  It enabled me to keep my heart open and even to be able to help her see her pattern (chart) playing out.

PS. The Astrological Association is holding its conference on the 7^th to the 9^th of September 2012 (http://www.astrologicalassociation.com/pages/conference/2012/index.php).  This provides a suite of seminars from top astrologers across the 3 days.

Further thoughts on the Euro Crisis

So now the Euro crisis is set to continue (perhaps as those with a knowledge of Astrology would have anticipated).  Last week I was in both Paris and Frankfurt, this week in Milan and the Czech Republic.  Whilst in Paris, I spoke to a Senegalese taxi driver.  I shared my thoughts on Europe and was interested to find him agreeing vehemently with them - I liked him a lot (I find I tend to like people who vehemently agree with me!).  In a previous blog I mentioned that I thought that Europe had spoilt the smaller nations (Greece, Ireland, Portugal etc.) like a bad parent who indulges their children.  As parents we had tempted them with money for infastructure projects on the promise that it would help accelerate their growth.  The catch was that they needed to provide half the funding for these projects.  They could not resist the temptation of the money and bankrupted themselves in the process.  But who do they owe the money to?  The answer is the European banks; for Greece France owns fifty percent of the debt, Germany over thirty percent and the UK around fourteen percent.  So everyone has been using (usury used to be the term for lending money to others to make profit) everyone else.  The chickens have well and truly come home to roost.  What is the solution to all of this?  I am conscious that the response of the EU currently has been to increase and centralise control.  This is the response of many a parent when they feel their children are misbehaving (interestingly many insightful television programmes have helped highlight the fact that it is usually the parents who are creating or exacerbating the issue and need to change in such situations).  This response of centralising power has critical dangers.  If you want others to grow and take responsibility but they fail to do so, or act irresponsibly, then the natural response is to withdraw responsibility.  Unfortunately, often the result of this is to further deepen the problem.  When someone takes control over us they assume a parental position.  Our instinctive reaction to this is usually either to be "good" and comply or to rebel and be more irresponsible.  Either response re-inforces a dependent and childlike relationship.

Working as chairman of our local Steiner school, I noticed in trying to change the school and address some of the issues that it had, we, as governors, ended up taking greater and greater responsibility.  Furthermore, the more we took responsibility the less that staff seemed to.  The result was a continuing rift between the governors and the teaching staff.  This seemed endemic, as it played out at other Steiner Schools and had been the case long before I was part of the school.  I noticed after some time that the way the administrator and the governors talked about the staff was as if they were errant children and indeed they seemed to behave more and more like errant children.  At the time there was a plan to restructure the management of the school which the governors were enthusiastic about implementing.  However, the staff rebelled and insisted that they wanted to continue to implement the approach that they had always had (which had never worked successfully).  The result was a schism between the Governors and teachers running the school.  The temptation on the part of the governors was to enforce the change.  However, I recognised that to do this would perpetuate the sense of "us" and "them".  Consulting the I-Ching I received the top line of Hexagram 5 which talks about "even happy turns of fortune come to us in a form that at first seems strange".  It certainly did seem strange.  Initially the teaching staff were very aggressive and determined to seize power and dictate how things would be.  They set about fighting us (the governors) for power.  However, I could see that whilst initially it was difficult and appeared to signal collapse and destruction - the adminstrator was sacked from her role and  destructive oppositions were created with the parents and the support staff, I realised that something else was at play.  I realised it was a test or learning for dealing with power.  If we held on to it as Governors, or even fought for it, then it would be a fight without end and everyone would be suffer. If we acted through force or power then we signalled that our aim or purpose was power.  Life has a wonderful sense of humour and the person leading the teachers at the time, and full of revolutionary zeal was a man whose surname was Power!  It was clear to me that the lesson was about how to handle power (when you begin to see how the Universe is working, it is amazing how much it gives the game away)!  So I decided that my test was to give away power and go with this new emerging energy.  I started by apologising for our part in the situation as governors and for the fact that we had tried to push a change programme on the school - my fellow governors were not too happy about this and considering whether to assert their authority and try to force through the change but luckily for me they were willing to trust me.  So instead we gave away power to the teaching staff and let them win the fight.  Also, I could see that this move on the part of the teachers was exactly the responsibility we had been looking for.  It might not be coming out in the form we desired but it was the energy we had bemoaned the lack of.  I had to work like I had never worked before to hold any frustration and instead be determined to work on supporting the teachers in taking responsibility, but I realised that unless someone transformed the oppositions and negative emotions then nothing would change.  Since I had no control over anyone else and it was not my responsibility to dictate how others behaved I could only work on myself.  My fellow governors mostly followed suit.  After 18 months, I remember them saying to me that they now felt they would not choose anyone other than our Mr Power to be the Chair of College (the teaching body managing the school).  This was in direct contrast to 18 months earlier!  It is now some six or seven years since these events.  The school had an Ofsted inspection and one of the elements that received the biggest commendation was the very positive working relationship between the governors and the teachers.  The company that ran the inspection was one set up particularly with Steiner schools in mind and they were intrigued to know how we had got round the division between teachers and governors that seemed to bedevil every school.  To this day, one thing that is continually referred to by both the teaching staff and the governors is the fantastic working relationships between us; they talk about the fact that there is so much trust that they feel as if it is just one body.  Our mutual respect and affection for each other is very high and the relationship seems so natural no-one can really understand how it was ever different.  This experience was a wonderfully rich learning experience for me.  It took very hard work to transform the opposition into union but I realised it was what the I-Ching meant by the hexagram Work on What Has Been Spoiled.

The situation of the EU appears to be Work on What has Been Spoiled (Hexagram 18).  It is not a mistake that the EU is in the position that it is in, it is a lesson which has to be worked on consciously to understand the reasons and take responsibility for the situation.  Taking greater centralised power does not seem like it is going to work.  It feels like King Canute trying to hold back the waves.  There is a model which I have worked with a great deal over the years which sees three stages of development in creating relationships, teams and organisations.  The three stages are inclusion (or dependence), assertion (or independence) and collaboration (interdependence).  To get to interdependence you have to work through dependence and independence.  The key is that interdependence includes dependence and independence.  It is the independence which is always tricky for people because Saturn (structure and control) is an uneasy bedfellow with Uranus (independence).  In myth Kronos (Saturn) cut off his father Ouranos's (Uranus) testicles.  Symbolically this represents the way that structure and control over time disempower new fresh energies.  Applying greater control, I fear, is unlikely to elicit greater responsibility.  The danger is that democracy is having to be bypassed.  Most large conglomerations of power seem prey to falling into corruption and bureaucracy and in the end lose the dynamic and fresh independent energy needed to sustain them - think of the Eastern Bloc and Russia, think of Rome etc.  So the key appears to be finding the balance between independence and dependence in order to get to interdependence (the conscious and voluntary choice to co-operate from a position of independence).  An analogy a friend of mine uses for Europe is that of living with one's neighbours.  We may get on very amicably with our neighbours but this relies on the freedom we have to choose to co-operate from a position of independence.  Were we to try to share a bank account with our neighbours, the likelihood is that we would quickly find ourselves in many fights and unhappiness (blocks of flats which share costs rarely seem to do so amicably).  The I-Ching in the hexagram The Family (number 37) states that the family is the basis for all society.  In line 3, where it is describing conflicts within the family, it says that "the wise thing is to build strong dikes within which complete freedom of movement is allowed each individual".

So we are experimenting with our interdependence and with groups.  Not surprising given the movement to the age of Aquarius.  It is going to take time; probably hundreds and thousands of years, to crack this one.

And so finally, back to the Senegalese taxi driver - where does he fit into things?  I was thinking about King Canute holding back the waves and the fight there is between a human's conception of their power and what they deem important and Nature.  Europe is a human construct.  Their are no physical boundaries which define Europe.  Indeed no-one seems terribly clear what is included in Europe exactly - is Russia part of Europe?  The EU is considering including Turkey as part of Europe.  When I was in Milan, I was told a joke by one of my Italian coachees - with the Hong Kong stock exchange everyone knows it is backed by the might of China, with the New York stock exchange everyone knows it is backed by the might of America, without Europe, what is the London stock exchange backed by?  The answer - Surrey!  The message was that London needs Europe and many people have described the UK as a pygmy without it.  This intrigued because I began to see as I went round Europe that the main arguments in favour of Europe were largely based on fears connected to power.  Indeed in  Italy and France the sentiment was very clear, that we needed to hold together in these difficult times to protect each other.  The analogy I was given by one Italian was that it was like being on a lifeboat in a shipwreck in raging seas with people drowning around you.  You have to look after yourself and hold together with others to prevent being taken down by those less fortunate.  I didn't like this image, I replied that I would rather try and save as many people as I could and if I died then so be it, better that than live at someone else's expense.  When I was talking to the Senegalese taxi driver this is what we were discussing.  I shared with him my thought that I didn't like the exclusive nature of club Europe which sought to create barriers towards other nations.  It is a self-protective mechanism.  The argument always seems to be one of a herd mentality - you can't leave the herd, you will be isolated and die without the protection of the herd.  This instinctive way of acting is based on fears and suspicion.  It is "us" against the great "them".  It occurred to me that the notion of Europe is that of an elite club and is against the flow (King Canute's waves) of our human hearts.  There is a historic flow of interaction and trade between France and northern African countries like Senegal, there is also a flow of interaction and trade between the UK and the old commonwealth.  I wonder if Europe denies our global interdependence and seeks to create a mutual dependence within a clique?  I think maybe we all need each other during difficult times like this and I certainly feel that there is an opportunity for the European countries who have benefited and in previous centuries exploited other countries to support and help them.  My Senegalese taxi driver liked this idea.  He felt that Europe was an exclusive club and it was time for it to reach out rather than trying to protect itself and exploit others.  Creating a European super state doesn't feel like doing that to me.  So perhaps Europe needs to break down so that every country can enjoy it's independence but choose consciously to be part of a globally interdependent world where it is supported and helped.  Europe was originally created to prevent the disasters of another World War, in particular to prevent France and Germany ever being in violent opposition to each other.  Perhaps it is time for everyone to be included in this?  Perhaps the blockage that Europe represents to the Global flow needs to be washed away to achieve this?  When we are friends with people only our jealousy (based on fear) tells us that they are not allowed to be friends with others and must exclusively be friends with us.  I would like every country to be free to be friends with every other country.  It usually means we end up losing friends if we can't share them with everyone.  I would like every country to be free to be friends with every other country.  In this respect I leave the last word to William Blake:

    He who binds to himself a joy
    Doth the winged life destroy,
    But he who kisses the joy as it flies
    Lives in eternity's sunrise.

A vignette from Life

This afternoon I returned from Dubai after spending 2 days coaching for one of my clients.  I do not particularly like Dubai as a place, the artificiality and the focus on materiality and luxury do not appeal to me greatly. This time, though, I took more time to understand the background to Dubai and its phenomenal growth.  It was intriguing to look at how fast it has grown and to see how it has positioned itself to be a hub between the East and West and also the North and South.  What made me sad was chatting to the taxi drivers (mostly Indian) who drove me.  One in particular, who was not unusual, had come from Chennai in India and had been working in Dubai for seven years to send money back home to his wife and children.  He aimed to stay another two or three years (although I noted that everyone I spoke to aimed to stay another two or three years before returning home).

My instinctive reaction was that this was not something that would be acceptable in England.  As usual, Life was listening.  On returning to the UK, I had an hour and a half to talk to the taxi driver driving me home from Birmingham airport who explained to me how many flights now came into Birmingham and Manchester Airports and how the Emirates was paying for an extension of the runway at Birmingham airport in order to allow the Boeing 780s to land (these planes carry up to 600 passengers).  At Manchester, he explained there were 3 flights per day to Dubai.  I then spent time (as I love to do) chatting to the taxi driver about his life and sharing mine.  He explained that he had become a taxi driver when his business selling small gifts in offices had gone bust.  He described how he now worked on average 75 hours a week.  I asked him why he worked so many hours and he explained that he was only paid the minimum wage of £5.50 an hour which had just been put up to £6.10 an hour and this was the only way to make it pay.  Suddenly I saw how cleverly Life had caught me out again - here was an exact parallel of what I had seen in Dubai and it was the Emirates that was providing the work!  I wanted to know more, curious to understand his black hole game and what had brought him to this point.  He explained that the accountants for the business had made an error on VAT which landed them with a bill for £20,000 that they could not afford.  He and his wife carried on trying to survive but reached a point where they realised that they were completely overwhelmed with debt.  They had used their credit cards to their maximum, they were missing payments on their mortgage and so on.  He said that he turned to his wife and said they were going to have to give up and ask for help.  So he consolidated the debt.  It was £120,000.  He explained that it was going to take until he was 75 until the debt was paid off, however, they got to keep the house which was important to his wife and didn't have to declare themselves bankrupt this way.  My heart went out to him and I was busy thinking of schemes whereby I could anonymously help him out by paying off some of his debt.  However, as we talked, he explained that many of his fellow drivers complained about how they were treated by their company but his response was that it depended how you viewed it (something we had been discussing in terms of what you could control in your life) and he would always challenge the other drivers on what other job they could do where they could paid to drive a top class Mercedes Benz around all day.  As he explained more about his background it emerged that his father had been a relatively successful stockbroker and he had come from a reasonably well-off background.  He explained that his father, though, had spent his whole Life speculating and trying various schemes to make money and he had inherited this.  I reflected to him, that perhaps his situation had freed him from this and he agreed.  He reflected and said that his wife had a good job which paid reasonably well, he got to keep the money above a certain level to pay off some of the debt and they continued to live in their house.  In many ways he had all he wanted and was freed from the scheming, worry and fear about money.  He was quite surprised to realise that he was probably more content now than he had been at any stage of his life and agreed wholeheartedly with me that money was relative - the problems did not really change, they scaled up or down.  We talked about the Emirates who were fabulously wealthy and speculated that probably the less wealthy Emirs probably felt poor and jealous of the wealthier ones, that the Sheik of Abu Dhabi (the captial Emirate) probably got very anxious and jealous when Dubai expanded and grew so rapidly and he no doubt feared he would miss the boat and be outdone by his fellow Emir.

I related to him that when I was in my teens (we were not particularly well-off when I was young) I asked my father who continually worried about money, how much money it would need for him to stop worrying about money (I was nothing if not a precocious child!).  I was stunned because he had an instant reply - £250,000.  At that point you join the world of the rich where money makes money he said.  It was because this was the amount at the time that you needed to be a "name" at Lloyds of London (before the crash when they were all bankrupted!).  Some years later with inflation and property house rises I realised my Dad was probably worth £250,000 so I asked him "are you happy now? Are you secure?" (what it is to have kids eh?).  "No" he replied.  Given inflation and other factors he explained that the figure would now be a million pounds.  I waited patiently and when my Dad retired he sold his business and with a small inheritance and the rise in property prices I realised he had again exceeded his goal for security.  I asked him again if he had done it.  He told me that now all he was doing was worrying about it running out and the fact that mother was still young and that he realised he was never going to be free of it no matter how much he earned.  It struck me, having inherited his anxiety about money, that no amount of change in his external situation would change anything if it was going to change it would require a change internally in attitude.

When I got back home, I could feel an interesting after effect of the trip to Dubai.  I had flow Business class, I had stayed in a hotel with a sauna and swimming pool in the sunshine and come back in a chauffeur driven car (free courtesy of Emirates airline).  There was just the first traces of being seduced by the luxury lifestyle. When I had landed I had been noticing the first signs of this and I was reminded of the line in the I-Ching about someone when he is established becoming arrogant and luxury loving.  I sat down at my messy desk in my ramshackle house and opened up my emails.  There was an email from one of my clients about my trip to Paris the following week.  It detailed that a number of people couldn't see me and one of the main people I was coaching did not want to see me.  My heart sank with paranoia and anxiety.  I turned to the I-Ching to consult it and received the first and 4th lines of 10 (Conduct) in a situation of 59 (Dispersion).  The first line says:

A man finds himself in an altogether inferior position at the start. However, he has the inner strength that guarantees progress. If he can be content with

simplicity, he can make progress without blame. When a man is dissatisfied with 
modest circumstances, he is restless and ambitious and tries to advance, not 
for the sake of accomplishing anything worth while, but merely in order to 
escape from lowliness and poverty by dint of his conduct. Once his purpose is 
achieved, he is certain to become arrogant and luxury-loving.

Arrogant and luxury loving! The fourth line was the contrast of someone hesitating and uncertain but
having the inner power to carry it through. I wrote to the individual who apparently did not want to see
me and said that the message I had received had made me anxious, was it that he wasn't going to be
around or was it that he didn't want to meet up with me again, that I didn't mind if it was this but it would be useful to know why. I received an immediate response saying he had not known whether he was going to be in Paris and that he had already confirmed a time since the message had been sent - and also reassuring me not to worry! As I received this, I suddenly twigged what Life had been up to. Careful it was saying, you get carried away and start getting comfortable and certain about anything and you are going to trip up, so here is a little shock to remind you. What I love about understanding Life in this way is that as soon as I understood what Life was saying and the I-Ching so clearly any anxiety disappeared and I could laugh and see the message. In this respect I am always reminded of Ram Dass seeing his guru in different guises coming to trip him up and test him - even coming disguised as a microphone that he didn't want - "I'll get you, you phony holy you". Life can catch us all just when we are tempted, I think it loves to trip us up whenever we succumb to hubris or we relax and get complacent.

(The author is currently absent in Paris being tested regularly and being reminded that he is in a precarious position and knows nothing - so that's ok then!).

Science vs. the rest of the world

On Friday evening I was flying back from Amsterdam to Bristol and reading the New Scientist.  There was an article in the magazine about the fact that in America there is a growing anti-scientific sentiment particularly in the Republican party but also among Democrats.  The article explained that presenting people with arguments and facts had not been persuasive and the article writer's view was that anti-scientific feeling had increased.  The article pondered what to do when faced with people who do not base their life on reason, rationality and evidence based policies. The author of the article put forward the idea that Science should learn from its opponents and started to use their tactics of persuasion to win the argument in favour of evidence based policies and rational thinking in fighting the forces of unreason and emotion.

In parallel, as I was reading this, I was engaged in my own private battle of unreason with the person in the seat in front of me on the plane.  This man, immediately following take off, thrust back his seat, put his earphones in and his blindfold on and thumped back against his chair bashing my knees.  I decided not to say anything but simply moved my legs to the side as far as I could.  Whilst not overly tall at six feet one inch, my legs are long in proportion to my height which is a disadvantage on cramped planes like this one.  On this plane the space between the seats was particularly narrow and the seat leaning back was a matter of inches from me.  After trying to sleep, I decided to read my copy of the New Scientist and started reading this article.  My only real option was to prop my New Scientist against the seat back of the man in front.  In doing this it touched the back of his head.  He kept feeling back with his hand to see what was touching his head and trying to push it away and I stubbornly pushed it back each time.  Eventually he looked round a couple of times to try without saying anything to signal that I should move my magazine but when he sat back down again, I repositioned it and made sure it was pushing slightly against his head.  Eventually he turned round and irritatedly asked me to move it.  I snapped back that I had no space to read since he had inconsiderately pushed his chair so far back.  After this exchange, we continued to fight a battle for the last 20 mins of the flight.   He thought about moving his chair forward but decided against it and I continued to push my New Scientist against his head.  Each of us made slight gestures – he moved his head forward slightly and I moved my New Scientist back marginally.

Where is the link between this mini war and the article in the New Scientist?  The link is that I realised that the New Scientist article was busy turning this issue of Science and its acceptance or non-acceptance into a war with sides.  The assumption was that Science was the only source of truth, knowledge or reason.  It also made the assumption that scientists are a homogenous group of people all wedded to these things.  Furthermore it made the assumption that those who do not classify themselves as scientists are wedded to ideology, emotion and irrationality.  Whilst many of the points raised were valid, the theme reflected a polarisation into “us and them”.  It is clearly disturbing for those who classify themselves as scientists that they do not feel that they are being listened to but there seemed to be nothing in the article to suggest that science or scientists should examine themselves in looking for where the problems might lie.

Back to my war with the man in front of me on the plane; what might the parallels be?  I was well aware that my position was unreasonable and that I was being provocative.  By the end of our small war, though, my heart was full of misgivings about my action and prompted by the article, I reflected on what my approach was contributing to division between people. When I looked at the man in front I could see that perhaps he felt some sadness at the situation.  Certainly I saw a fellow human being and my heart was sad at the discomfort and it resonated with how his might be feeling.  I realised I had a chance to change things: to apologise.  My rational mind told me that he had been selfish and that he might think twice before being so again but my heart was having none of it and was not comfortable.  My moment passed as people moved between us in the queue to get off the plane.  As I got off the plane and began walking to passport control there was no sign of him, but, some spirited walking later, I saw him ahead of me and after some reluctance I caught up with him, clapped him on the shoulder affectionately (I hope he thought it was!) and apologised to him, saying that I was sorry that I had snapped at him and that the airplane seats were so small it was that I didn’t have much room.  We chatted very aimiably all the way to Passport control.  He explained that he had been working away for three days and was worn out and having been away from home for five days, I commiserated.  The intriguing thing was that our hearts were more open to each other than if we had never talked or met.  I felt my heart warm completely to this amiable and open hearted man.

What intrigued me with reference to the article was that my heart had been far better at reasoning than my “rational” mind  and that he was an engineering consultant – a scientist!  In this situation, I had not found a way through by trying to identify what was wrong with this man’s approach however unreasonable I might have found his actions to be, but by examining my own unreasonableness.  In the hexagram conflict, the I-Ching says that we must come to meet others halfway, even if we are in the right.  The rational mind, concerned with facts and logic, has trouble understanding emotional realities such as the dangers of pushing an argument to the bitter end and the destructive effect this might have on the relationship.  In order to reason well we have to include the heart and the emotions.  As Albert Einstein observed "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."

Most astrologers would realise that Scientists identify very strongly with the empirical thinking mindset of earth (senses) and air (thinking) and project as their shadow fire (intuition) and water (feeling).  On my friend Chrissy's pattern of the elements described in her book The Golden City she describes the opposition Truth which has intuitive-feeling Pisces at one end and empiric thinking Aquarius at the other end of this opposition.  She labels this opposition Truth.  Both the scientist and the mystic seek the truth and both are equally condemning of the other.  Where science triumphs, there is the danger that there is no heart.  Where the intuitive mystic triumphs there is the danger of delusion.

The writer of the article described the foundations of American science as lying in the influence of Locke, Bacon, Jefferson and the principles of egality and liberty.  He quoted Jefferson's declaration of independence: "all men are born equal."  I wonder if this notion might be at the heart of the issue, since there is a misconception based on this that all men are equal and all men must be equal.  Perhaps if we rephrased it "all men are born unequal" we would have the inclusive and paradoxically wise notion that the way we are all the same is that we are all different, thus we could respect different viewpoints more easily.  As Einstein also said "Science without religion is lame, Religion without Science is blind".

The American war of Independence was fought and won at the time that the planet Uranus was being discovered.  When a planet is discovered, it’s properties shift from operating unconsciously in the collective to operating consciously.  Uranus is the planet that rules Aquarius and its energy was that of revolution.  It is also the planet that rules science, principles and independence or freedom.  The French revolution which was happening contemporaneously was also based on very Aquarian principles of egalite, fraternite and liberte.  There have been many experiments based on these principles over the years; communism was very much an expression of this.  Yet each time, the effects have been deeply impersonal and oppressive of individuals as the French revolution was with the mob running rampant and as the Industrial revolution was with individuals organised in large masses to serve technical breakthroughs.  The same themes persist in modern culture with global organisations whose call centres and activities ignore the individual hearts of those interacting with them.  Yet unbridled intuitive/feeling, with religious wars over the truth (think of the crusades and the Spanish inquisition), has been no better.  It is interesting to note that, as with all extremes, the two sides begin to resemble each other very closely.  On Chrissy’s pattern which she correlates to the I-Ching, Aquarius is the top line of the hexagram the Creative: “Arrogant dragon will have cause to repent”.  There was something of this in the tone of the article: science was the only route to the truth.  It sounds somewhat religious in nature.  On Chrissy’s model she posits the position in the middle as being key – that the truth, as the I-Ching so often advises us, lies in holding to the middle way.  This is where the Tao lies.

My own experience in organisations was that the approach of leaving aside emotion and making decisions based on policies rationally decided was a disaster because it lacked any heart and so decisions which looked fine on paper ended up being put into practice in inhuman ways in the name of consistency and equality.  Similarly, a chaotic approach based on individual whim was equally ineffective.  The only way was to think and reason with the heart.  Ie. to reason including all four elements of feeling, sensing, intuition and thinking.  It was ironic that a later book review in the same New Scientist describing fifteen scientific breakthroughs suggested how effective the author had been in capturing the perseverance, the willingness to follow hunches and the overcoming of jealousies, personal ambition and rivalry of fellow scientists that had been necessary to achieve these breakthroughs.  So, no irrational emotions at play among scientists there then!

Perhaps we are ready collectively in this age of Aquarius to step away from getting caught by polarities and instead to work constructively with these creative tensions, these polarities.  Can we embrace all four modes of being; sensing, thinking, feeling and intuition without polarising into camps of "us" and "them"?  Certainly it will require us to have the humility to put our own house in order rather than demanding others put theirs in order.