Too late, too late (a tale continued)

Some weeks back I wrote about a situation at a client of mine where division and conflict were destroying the organisation.  These conflicts have now fully played out to the point where the two offices involved are splitting apart amidst much rancour and mistrust.  Everyone feels it is everyone else's fault and blame and misunderstanding is rife.  It is a painful situation for everyone, agony indeed.

The conclusion that most of the people involved have come to is that it is too late now and nothing can be done; that it has gone too far and the broken trust cannot be rebuilt.
Recently among my friends we have been discussing the painful nature of life, no doubt prompted by the current Neptune Chiron conjunction.  My friend Chrissy asked the I-Ching about whether life had to be so painful.  She had been to watch La Traviata in which the heroine is dying of consumption and in which tragedy and suffering abound.  Despite this, the beauty of the opera is exquisite; the combination of orchestra, singing, drama is stunning and the ability of human brains to produce such beauty and complexity is testament to the brilliance of our evolution.  The audience was transported.  When Chrissy threw the I-Ching she received Enthusiasm and the second, third and top lines of Youthful Folly in a situation of Enthusiasm.  The lines read as follows:

° Nine in the second place means: To bear with fools in kindliness brings good fortune. To know how to take women Brings good fortune. The son is capable of taking charge of the household. These lines picture a man who has no external power, but who has enough strength of mind to bear his burden of responsibility. He has the inner superiority and that enable him to tolerate with kindliness the shortcomings of human folly. The same attitude is owed to women as the weaker sex. One must understand them and give them recognition in a spirit of chivalrous consideration. Only this combination of inner strength with outer reserve enables one to take on the responsibility of directing a larger social body with real success. 

Six in the third place means: Take not a maiden who. When she sees a man of bronze, Loses possession of herself. Nothing furthers. A weak, inexperienced man, struggling to rise, easily loses his own individuality when he slavishly imitates a strong personality of higher station. He is like a girl throwing herself away when she meets a strong man. Such a servile approach should not be encouraged, because it is bad both for the youth and the teacher. A girl owes it to her dignity to wait until she is wooed. In both cases it is undignified to offer oneself, and no good comes of accepting such an offer.

Nine at the top means: In punishing folly It does not further one To commit transgressions. The only thing that furthers Is to prevent transgressions. Sometimes an incorrigible fool must be punished. He who will not heed will be made to feel. This punishment is quite different from a preliminary shaking up. But the penalty should not be imposed in anger; it must be restricted to an objective guarding against unjustified excesses. Punishment is never an end in itself but serves merely to restore order. This applies not only in regard to education but also in regard to the measures taken by a government against a populace guilty of transgressions. Governmental interference should always be merely preventive and should have as its sole aim the establishment of public security and peace.

So what is the I-Ching telling us here about the nature of Life and suffering?  The second line suggests that Life thinks we are ready to take charge - that we are capable of taking responsibility and should show consideration towards the mistakes and follies of others - that it wants us to have compassion.  It is interesting to note here that we could not have compassion without suffering - that these two are linked.  Perhaps this is what we are learning under a Neptune-Chiron transit: that somehow our suffering is Grace - I will return to this theme.  So it thinks we are capable of taking responsibility and bearing gently with suffering caused by the mistakes of others; this sounds very different from blame.

In the second line it talks about the danger of having illusions, of looking to others to take responsibiltiy, that this isn't a game where we are allowed to pass the responsibility to others - to unconsciously rely on some higher power.  It is also suggests that we have got to work this out for ourselves - to do the job of working to become more conscious and take responsibility for ourselves.  It also suggests that any pre-conceived ideas are dangerous.  As Chrissy and my wife were speculating - why is the game like a mystery without any guidelines, where we have work out each step of the way without prior instructions?

The top line, Chrissy suggested, seemed to be telling us that the point of suffering was not to punish us or hurt us per se but to help us learn.  So that whilst it is painful for us, would we learn any other way, that it is not cruel or malicious but simply correctional.  All of this was in a situation of Enthusiasm.  In Enthusiasm it says that "it furthers one to install helpers and set armies marching".  Enthusiasm also talks about music as having a profound effect in clearing away obscure emotions and bringing people together in a unity of the heart.  So it seems to be suggesting that we are meant to helping each other and that there is a music at play through our hearts which unites us all.  At the same time it talks about the movement of the heavenly spheres and the fact that there are natural laws and patterns at work that if we understand them, allow us to bring everyone together and release the creative forces of the universe.  It is like a game and the I-Ching is saying it is up to us to discover the laws or patterns of the game and that in doing so we will be able to release the music of the spheres.
Is it possible that with this current Neptune-Chiron conjunction in Pisces there is a chance to transform or transcend the way we currently see suffering?  Certainly there have been a number of instances recently which have provided an opportunity to examine the nature of suffering and blame.  The recent bus crash in France which killed so many children, the sinking of the cruise ship off the coast of Italy and the on-going war in Afghanistan.

A recent article in the New Scientist reviewed the recent research on the brain in order to question whether we are truly responsible for our actions.  This prompted many worrying questions for our judicial system, yet, in the context of the pain of life, it raises an interesting perspective.  What if no-one is to blame?  The top line of the I-Ching suggested that the role of pain is corrective - ie. it's motive is learning not punishment.

Let me digress for a short while to discuss the planetoid Chiron about which I am waxing so lyrical.  Chiron is the wounded healer and, as I have written about in previous blogs, seems to be about The Black Hole Game (cf. One Way of Looking at Man by Chrissy Philp), ie. the game of life - that we fall in black holes which are painful but which cause us to give up inaccurate pictures of life and to learn and evolve.  It seems that it is only through the imperfection of life (and the suffering it causes), that we learn.  I watched a programme recently about a young girl in the United States who had a syndrome where she felt no pain.  When they were interviewing the parents, they asked them what the hardest part was and it was fascinating to note that they said it wasn't the horrendous injuries she had suffered - they showed pictures of horrific burns, cuts and breaks - but the fact she could not learn because there was no consequence to her actions and therefore no link between her actions and emotions.  Now this is fascinatingly paradoxical.  Here was a little girl who did not experience pain and yet our hearts went out to her - we felt sad for a little girl who suffered no pain because it was so painful...!  At the same time, I recognise that were it not for the pain (non-pain) of her situation, I would not have learnt so much.

If we go back to the situations that are causing pain at the moment, I noticed how quickly we condemned the captain of the cruise ship that ran aground.  A brilliant article in one of the national newspapers that I read shortly after the condemnation of the captain picked up on this theme of blame.  The author pointed out how quick we are to adopt a self-righteous tone and to blame the captain.  Implicit in this is the assumption that we would never behave in this way and yet, as he pointed out, which of us has not committed acts of bravado which we later regretted, which of us has not on a small daily level, run away from some mistake we made or failed to take responsibility for it?  Could we have compassion for the Captain - which of us would swap shoes with him?  Whatever the punishment in terms of prison we might devise it cannot be as bad as the knowledge of having caused so many deaths.  Today there were reports of soldier having left his barracks in Afghanistan and shot eighteen civillians.  We can easily condemn such actions, but we should rather ask ourselves how we come to put people into such a painful situation that they might commit such an act and cause such suffering for others?  In this there might be both learning and kindness or compassion.  Then perhaps, we can be the young son taking charge.

It seems with the "too late" refrain that we do not realise that we have the power to transform suffering to turn it into grace.  This morning, my wife and I argued furiously, it seemed initially that we could not understand each other and that the situation was impossible with both accusing and blaming each other.  Yet as we fought and wrestled with the situation, we reached a breakthrough and suddenly the love that we felt and the insights we gained seemed worth all the pain of the initial fight and our connection seemed deeper than ever.  I am indebted to my daughter India and to Chrissy for helping me to understand the meaning and application of the myth of Eriskigal in this context.  In the myth of Erishkigal, she is in grief over the death of her husband and Innana (her sister) goes down to see her in the underworld.  Being somewhat wary, she advises her friends to ask the god of wisdom (Enki) to help her if they have not heard from her.  She is killed by her sister and her friends petition Enki who sends down mourners to empathise with Erishkigal in her suffering.  After being empathised with and having others mourn with her, Erishkigal then heals her sister back to life.  What I could see in the situation at my client was that everyone was desperate to act to resolve the situation but it was not action that was needed it was empathy.  This would have transformed the situation.  It was true that it was too late to act, but it was perfect timing for compassion and understanding.  Have we evolved enough to recognise that no-one is to blame - that it is all part of the game and there really isn't anyone to blame.  I think we could begin that now.

A letter...

The following is a letter I wrote this week to my fellow directors concerning a small housing estate that the charity owns.  It contains about 9 houses all of which are in a state of some dilapidation and a number of which are pre-fabricated and past their sell by date.  The aim was to develop the site but it has hit obstacle after obstacle over the fourteen years that it has been in process.  Directors who were part of the Council (the board of directors for the charity – a Steiner School) set up a professional group to manage the development which was to be paid a percentage of the profits on completion of the project.  No-one had envisaged the obstacles which would hold this project up for fourteen years.  Having been part of the Council for thirteen and a half years and Chair for some ten years or more, I have now decided to resign and yet this last project felt like unfinished business as I outline in the letter.  Having asked for Life’s help in resolving this last loose end, in typical fashion, Life delivered by creating a crisis which forced me to think about it more deeply but which generated a insight about something which had baffled me for many years (I have changed a few of the names):

Brickwood – The Tale of the Golden Goose

The planned Brickwood Development was initiated the year before I first became involved with Council but has remained unfulfilled throughout my tenure. With my impending withdrawal from Council it was the last outstanding issue that felt like unfinished business and I wanted to resolve it as far as I was able.  With this in mind, I asked for Life’s help.  The result has been that Brickwood has hit crisis with Brickwood Development tendering their resignation and demanding payment for their services.  This was not quite the resolution I had in mind, but it has prompted a realisation about Brickwood which has eluded me all these years.

Like many before me, I put my time and energy into Brickwood and wanted to realise the aim of the housing development there, yet however much energy I put in and however many obstacles we resolved, fresh ones always cropped up and I could never see clearly why there should be such an impasse with the project, an impasse lasting fourteen years!  As you all know, my perspective on Life is that if something is blocked then there is usually a good reason and something that needs to be learnt or brought to consciousness.

It was only at the end of last year, that I began to see more clearly and my heart began to speak more fully.  In a conversation with Jim, following a Brickwood meeting, he pointed out that Brickwood was a contributor to the charity in terms of income rather than a drain (as had always been thought) and that we might well be better off developing it on a gradual basis and preserving the asset and income for the school.  At the same time, I realised that my heart was not comfortable with the proposed crowding of twenty nine houses on to a relatively small site nor the design of terraces that would have to be erected.  I realised that we were in danger of spoiling the site and creating something that no-one wanted.

In thinking about this more over the last few days, I had a breakthrough in terms of the pattern of Brickwood and why it was stuck; I could see a recurring theme.  Everyone who has been involved in Brickwood has been caught by a desire to profit from it; this desire has often run for a number of years but has then ended up turning to dust in people’s hands.  Phil and Jane at Homing House were caught by greed at the prospect of holding the school to ransom for the land needed for the sight lines and so was their agent, yet in the end their greed meant they ended up getting nothing as the sight line needs were changed by new planning directives.  John, our neighbour, held us to ransom for years over the need to move the road yet, again, his greed defeated him as the resentment at this caused others to challenge his right legally and it was proved invalid.  The initial residents at Brickwood were full of plans for how the development should be tailored to suit their needs even though they did not own it and again it came to nought.  Colin Ford and others wanted to create a community for themselves, but that also came to nought.

Thinking about Brickwood I realised it was a trap and the analogy that came to mind was the Grimm Brothers’ tale of the Golden Goose, where each person that sees the goose tries to pluck one of it’s golden feathers but in doing so becomes stuck to the goose or the other people.  It feels very much that this is the issue with Brookthorpe; everyone is stuck to it by their desire to profit from it.  Sadly, I fear that for all their best intentions, this includes Brickwood Development, but it also includes the the charity.  We have been blinded by our greed and are part of this chain of people stuck to the goose.  In our case, I think the covenant is a particularly dangerous trap.  Our greed and fear causes us to hold on to a covenant which has soured and continues to sour our relationship with our neighbour and our conviction that there is more gold to come than to simply restore the site and generate an income and provision for staff causes us to spend more and more money and neglect the site.  In selling the nursing home, I am conscious twenty years later that no-one now remembers where the profit was spent but everyone still regrets selling off a gift and asset.

I think the lesson I derive from all this is that profit should not be our motive; there are more important considerations.  Profit, as far as I am aware, is not one of our objects as a charity.  When I sold my last house there was a dispute over the land that came with it, which our neighbours had tried to buy before we moved in since it was actually connected to their house not ours.  We were not aware of this when buying but when we left the house, we sold the field (against the advice of our property agents) to our neighbours, because we wanted to leave the property cleanly without being responsible for perpetuating a conflict.  I am not against making money, but I am against putting it first in our considerations.  I think that if we build something which goes against the wishes of staff, which is out of keeping with the village, perpetuates the badwill with our neighbour and which ruins the gift given to us by the founders of the school then we will be responsible for that and it’s impact will far outweigh any monetary gain.

For Brickwood Development, my own perspective would be that to be involved with a charity must be free of a motive to gain financially on a personal level.  I know Martin and Chris have given a lot to the school and Chris continues to do so but I think they may have got caught in the Brickwood trap.  It is probably most painful for them, as I can’t imagine they will feel comfortable in their hearts extracting a payment of the level of £70,000 from the charity and they have also been caught for fourteen frustrating years.

The other and better known version of the Golden Goose is the tale of a goose that laid a golden egg each day.  The owners were dissatisfied with this and sought to find the lump of gold inside the hen that was producing the eggs in order to be richer (or to feed it to get it to lay 2 eggs a day depending on the version).  In each case they killed the Goose and lost the egg.  I think this Golden Goose tale also applies to us.

I recognise that others may disagree with my perspective and am willing to be proved wrong but, for me, Brickwood has served its purpose as a last lesson which I am only sorry I did not see more clearly earlier.  I do not think anyone is to blame, everyone has suffered (perhaps Brickwood Development most of all) but I am keen personally to learn so that we do not repeat this mistake or perpetuate it.


I am conscious that the tendency is to think of the world in a very practical framework of cause and effect.  Fairytales and myths seem part of a previous more superstitious world where we did not have such control over and knowledge of how to manipulate our physical environment.  Not making a profit, or putting making profit first seems somehow alien to us in this day and age and also the idea of emotions such as greed, envy etc. as if they are part of an old story.  The concept of a consequence for our immoral actions feels outdated, part of a child like existence (we often only tell myths and fairytales to children as if they are no longer relevant to us as adults who have grown up) in our cause and effect model of physical reality yet my experience is that fairtyales, myths and morality are very much alive and playing out in much the same way. Indeed I often wonder if it is our insistence on this material view of the world which is oddly fairytale like; a strange illusion imposed on a reality which it does not fit in a child like insistence that we are in control of our lives.

A man sat next to me...

On my way to Dubai last week I sat next to a man who engaged me in conversation. He was on his way to be interviewed as a pilot for Emirates and currently worked for Ryanair. He was very talkative and this created a conflict for me since it was a flight of only 7 hours and we would be arriving at 7am at which point I would be then due to do a full day's work. I did not want to be rude or hurt his feelings but I didneeded to work. This is not an unfamiliar conflict for me since my Sagittarian personality does not want to get tied down or trapped talking to people whilst my Cancer moon does not want to feel that I have hurt someone's feelings. In this  instance I resisted engaging much beyond fairly superficial small talk and then tried to go to sleep at an opportune  moment when he was distracted by the cabin crew.  I did not sleep much and resumed our conversation for the last part of the flight. We parted on good terms having chatted whilst we went through customs.  Yet in my heart I knew I had humoured him without fully engaging with him. Musing on my plans for my return flight I was thinking about how I would spend some time sleeping and then working on admin tasks that I needed to complete that day before going on holiday the following day. The next thing I knew there was a tap on my shoulder and my friend from the previous flight was there. We chatted on the bus and as we went up the steps my mind was wondering and speculating furiously on whether Life was going to place us together. However, I strongly suspected I knew the answer. What's your seat number he asked me, I replied that it was 2B. With obvious pleasure he responded that he was in 2A. With some resignation I realised that Life had shifted the tables on me and all my plans to get ahead that day were going to go into abeyance. We chatted in our previous somewhat superficial way for some 20 mins and then I realised that I was going to have to really engage in the conversation. I did so and we began to discuss his relationships with which he was having a lot of problems. I was also able to do his chart, he turned out to be a Gemini with Sun trine Jupiter which was no great surprise for a pilot. Part of his problem was that he kept attracting girlfriends who is his mind kept turning out to be very jealous possesive and irrational. As we worked at this and knowing that he has Venus rising in Taurus opposite Pluto in Scorpio on the descendant with Saturn also in the seventh house in Scorpio. What he began to appreciate was that he was equally jealous and possesive and that whilst he accused his girlfriends of giving completely mixed messages which were unintelligible, they might equally accuse him of the same thing.  We looked at the charts of the two main women he had been involved with and even I, as a seasoned astrologer, was stunned by the similarities between their charts. We were talking about the black hole of feeling that the grass was greener. He began to see that he could choose as many girlfriends as he liked but he wasn't going to escape the issues that were inherent in his own nature and fate (something the chart describes beautifully). He was currently contemplating a relatioinship with someone who was with someone else. She was telling him that her current boyfriend was awful and she hated him. His concern in relationships was that he ended up getting very suspicious and hated game playing. I did point out that if he got together with a girlfriend that was already lining up her next relationship and hating her current boyfriend, he would then be the inccumbent boyfriend and it might be wise to expect to feel paranoid and suspicious. We also talked about the value of starting and ending situations cleanly. He recognised he tended to go for women who were unavailable but then the relationship ended because they were suspicious of him and he of them. I realised that he had never been taughht about relationships. He said that most of his friends and colleagues told him that women were just irrational and messed your head up. He was amazed to understand that he could exercise some choice over his relationships, if only to learn how to inhibit the more negative instincts. The learning here for me was about our reistance to the agenda of our lives. In this instance on both flights, I was convinced that I knew what the agenda was for my flight. Look, I have someone who needs input from you about relationships Life said. I'm sorry it's not on my agenda i replied. Yes it really is Life responded and I've got work for you. In engaging fully with this man rather than resisting my concerns about being trapped disappeared and the time flew by. At a naturalpoint we both decided to sleep and I slept  soundly for 3 hours. When I got home my wife had kindly packed for me and I had time to finish my urgent admin.   The Great Way Is Not Difficult For Those Who Have No Preferences Hsin Hsin Ming says in The Book Of Nothing. Many people assume that this means that we adopt a passive attitude to Life living a life of bliss and laid back harmony but this is a preference of course. What it really means is that we have no resistance to the agenda that life sets for us. Sometimes our agenda is very difficult and the opposite of what we might choose for ourself. This had been a factor in the programme we had just run where  the participants were consistently frustrated that their circumstances did not meet the criteria for how they felt their lives should be progressing yet for each they were engaged in a power battle with Life trying to change these circumstances. With a number of them they found themselves back in the same place having tried to change jobs, countries, bosses only to find themselves back in the same black hole that they thought they were escaping.  Interestingly most of us can recognise the value of what we are really learning many years later when we look back and realise what valuable lessons we learnt. Yet I do not believe we need to wait until many years after th event to see the value or learning of our actual agenda, indeed seeing it at the time considerably eases the process, if it doesn't eradicate the difficulty or pain. Just to make sure that I got the lesson, Life prepared a number of examinations for us on our holiday, a 3 hour delay which lasted long enough to prevent me being able to get there in time to watch the England rugby match I had planned to get there in time to see. On our first day skiing the boots that we had bought for our daughter India at some expense were so uncomfortable she was in tears and throwing tantrums saying she wanted to give up on them and go home. I failed spectacularly to adjust to my new curriculum and threw a big tantrum, trying to cling to my curriculum of being on holiday and going skiing for the day. Having apologised and suffered the regret of having hurt my daughter, I realised that my relationship with my daughter was more important than my attachment to my idea of the skiing holiday.  The next day, having adjusted my mind to the idea that the day might be about boot problems or anything but skiing, I was not surprised to find that my knee was now so painful I could barely ski. I decided to go with it and adjust my expectations to ski carefully within my capabilities. It turned out to be a beautiful day where we all skied together and India had no problems with my boots. So why is it important to adjust to the demands of Life? Religion has created a sense that we should do so, that it is a question of good and bad, somewhat like a cosmic school with points for good behaviour. Indeed the incentive is often some future reward in the form of a heaven and hell. Yet is this notion worthwhile with its message of conformity? It somehow does not feel satisfying either to be a self satisfied do gooder conforming to the rules like avoiding stepping on pavement cracks in case we get into trouble with a super parent or a supertitious conformer dominated by fears of retribution.  In the end I gave up my resistance in each case because it hurt my own heart not to do so. Perhaps it is in our own interests to do so: an enlightened self-interest. I did not act in either case because I thought that it would lead to a postive outcome or some reward but because I was uncomfortable with my own behaviour, the outcome could have been disastrous but I would have been comfortable in my heart with my response. Perhaps my next lesson will be about making sure I am not attached to positive outcomes for doing the right things. I expect a big initial tantrum!

What is acceptable?

Having just returned from abroad where I was coaching a number of leaders in a large firm where there were some serious internal conflicts, I was struck by the fact that a number of people described the conflict going on in the firm and the behaviour of individuals as unacceptable.  Of course, it was always the behaviour of others that was unacceptable.  There was also much discussion of the fact that relationships had irretrievably broken down.  Both these elements make it sound as if there is a rule book somewhere that can be consulted.  Perhaps such a tome does exist and I have missed it, if so, I would be grateful to anyone who could lend me a copy.
The other thing that I noticed was that they described each other as "having a problem that they need help with"; implying a serious mental instability.  As I have mentioned before, my experience has been that for each of us, there is always someone who is a thorn in our side, but for whom our lives would run smoothly.  Much of my coaching involves trying to help people see these individuals differently to "accept" them in their lives and recognise their value - that they are usually the source of our profoundest growth and development.  Many people subscribe to this view but it is a dangerous path, we describe others as having problems that absolve us of the need to see their actions as human or understandable.
Since some of the individuals involved were also in the midst of painful divorces, it prompted me to think about whether a relationship has ever irretrievably broken down.  The leader of the firm, who had a balanced perspective on the situation, challenged my response that I wasn't sure there was ever an irretrievable breakdown in relationships and said to me that sometimes relationships do breakdown irretrievably.  This prompted me to think about relationships that really have broken down in a spectacular way; the Palestinians and Israelis, Northern Ireland, South Africa etc.  Since the leader of the firm was Irish, we talked about the relationships in Northern Ireland.  Who would have anticipated that Gerry Adams and David Trimble, or even Ian Paisley could work together?  I think all of us might have suggested that that was a relationship that had broken down irretrievably, and yet, the breakthroughs in that relationship has brought the end of over four hundred years of violence conflict.
The implication in the instance of the individuals who were in the midst of the conflict I was trying to work with, was that there was somehow some imaginary formula or process for action when two individuals acknowledged their relationship had broken down irretrievably, somehow that they were now absolved of responsibility.  After talking to everyone who told me that they were exhausted by the conflicts and that a decision had to be taken and someone needed to go, I threw hexagram 47 - Oppression (Exhaustion).  Well, I could not fault the I-Ching here!  In Oppression, the I-Ching says that encountering an adverse fate is a test of character, that it is important to overcome the trouble inwardly and to be able to rise above one's fate - to be like a tree that bends and has the capacity to return.  It recommends remaining cheerful so that we are not caught in the Oppression.  Oppression is a black hole, a black hole being a situation where we are stuck because our picture of how we want the world to be does not match the reality we are encountering.  Everyone in the office was stuck in a black hole.  I too felt exhausted by the conflict and how to help the individuals involved.  Having spent many hours the previous day with one of the protagonists, I could see they were very stuck.  Only at the end had I found a way of dealing with it creatively and beginning to make progress.  I felt as sad and stumped as everyone.  At this point one of the leaders not directly involved came to see me (let's call him Peter) and he had a different perspective from all the others affected; he was someone I had been working with for some time and had started to work with the I-Ching. He was not exhausted like everyone else, instead he described to me with great clarity exactly how the situation had come about and the stunning symmetry in the way that the two main individuals involved had swapped positions so that the way that they were now treating each other exactly mirrored the positions they had started in.  The third person most directly affected by the conflict was also someone I was coaching: let's call him Philip.  Philip was frustrated because he felt the behaviour of the woman involved, let's call her Jane (none of them are English but I am going to use English names!), was unacceptable and that the firm needed to kick her out.  I pointed out to him that in the past, he had found himself in this position three times already and each time he had been sure that kicking out the person he perceived to be causing the trouble and distracting everyone from getting on with work would solve the problem, yet each time, a new person had popped up as the problem.  For me, it was like trying to chop off the head of the Hydra, each time you lopped one off a new one sprouted up.  For the first time, he could clearly see the repeating pattern.
In discussing all of this with my coachee Peter, we were relfecting on what a sense of humour Life had and how brilliantly it had orchestrated the situation so that everyone was learning what they needed to.  What had seemed a mess to everyone else was to him perfect and he saw that if he trod carefully he might be able to help everyone learn and shift the situation.  The I-Ching says that all men are one in their hearts.  I could see in this situation that Peter's heart was open to everyone and critically to the situation - he had not closed down to the possibility of being able to work and to learn, quite the reverse.  Since we are all one in hearts, I have come to realise that if one heart closes down it is like losing an arterial road in the road network, it backs up traffic everywhere as people try to compensate for the blockage in this route.  Everyone is affected and everyone is blocked.  In this situation with the two individuals (Jane and Christopher), the whole firm in this country was sucked into the conflict and everyone's hearts were affected.  Indeed the whole firm was in danger.  The fact that it was so dangerous for everyone, I could see was very valuable.  If it wasn't so dangerous where would the incentive be for everyone to take it seriously and work on it.  Similarly, I recognised that it was great that everyone was fed up and exhausted by it, because it meant that they were ready to try a different approach - they had exhausted a way of acting that was not working.  Despite the difficulties and frustrations, there were more breakthroughs in coaching people than there had been for a while.
At this point, I want to take a slight detour to talk about my experience of organisations.  Margaret Thatcher famously said that there is no such thing as society, only individuals and families.  At one level, there is a truth in this similar to that of the old chinese proverb which states that if you want to change the nation, change the state, if you want to change the state, change the family, if you want to change the family change yourself.  I have written about the fact that organisations only change when individuals become more conscious.  However, I also recognise, as an astrologer that organisations like individuals have personalities (charts) and that it is valuable to think about what the black hole game might be for an organisation.  Most individuals do not consider that organisations have personalities, they consider that they can create the personalities of the organisations (in this sense I see cultures and personalities as interchangeable when it comes to organisations).  From my experience it has been far more valuable to see organisations like I see individuals, ie. that their basic nature is a given, in the same way it is for our personalities.  Our role then, is not to try and work against their natures but rather to understand and become more conscious of them so that we can get the best from them and learn how to develop and evolve them.  In this firm, the culture has remained the same for the many years I have worked with it.  There are always large flamboyant central conflicts in relationships which dominate the firm and it has regularly tried to scapegoat one of the protagonists and hope that this will solve the problem, but in the process it has become smaller and smaller as more and more people have to be cut out.  I have been working at helping people become aware of this and be able to handle conflict and competition so that there is a core of people who can help the firm move forward. This has had some success, in parts of the firm we have caught the seeds of conflict early and resolved them so that the individuals work co-operatively together and that part of the organisation thrives.  It is a critical time for the firm, everyone thinks it is disastrous but really it is an opportunity.  There is a chance to break the pattern inherent in the culture of scapegoating difficult people and getting rid of them and instead working with them.  I see in organisations (and individuals) that we are often tested by difficult situations and fail to be conscious enough to resolve them, they then do tend to come again and if we have worked at becoming more conscious we have a chance individually and collectively to put it right and to resolve the conflict.  The results are well worth the difficulty.  Northern Ireland was stuck for four hundred years and now it has moved forward.  Every situation holds the possibility of starting afresh for me, which is why I wonder about the finality of irretrievable or unacceptable.
Central to this issue of how to tolerate people is how we see business.  The I-Ching states in the top line of the Receptive;
Six at the top means: Dragons fight in the meadow. Their blood is black and yellow.
In the top place the dark element should yield to the light. If it attempts to maintain a position to which it is not entitled and to rule instead of serving, it draws down upon itself the anger of the strong. A struggle ensues in which it is overthrown, with injury, however, to both sides. The dragon, symbol of heaven, comes to fight the false dragon that symbolized the inflation of the earth principle. Midnight blue is the color of heaven; yellow is the color of earth. Therefore, when black and yellow blood flow, it is a sign that in this unnatural contest both primal powers suffer injury.
I noticed that in this instance a number of people said to me, that one had to be practical and the important thing was clients and the work.  The issue of the conflict was seen as a distraction that needed to be got rid of, that individuals did not have time for these emotional difficulties.  This for me, is an example of this line operating.  Most people felt that these issues and challenges they faced were the distraction that was getting in the way of business.  Yet my own experience has been that these issues and how to respond to them and work at them are our business, our most important business.  The paradox for this firm is that not having dealt with these issues is the factor that has most damaged the firm and where they have been dealt with wisely the business has thrived.  I recognise that in all businesses there are people with difficult and challenging personalities, I am interested to work out how we help these people not how we condemn them or scapegoat them.  Since some (mentally unstable) people would see me as having a difficult and challenging personality, I clearly have a vested interest in this respect!
So is there behaviour which is unacceptable or a relationship which is irretrievable?  In both of these cases, the real message was that these were excuses for not being willing to work at a relationship.  Saying something is unacceptable absolves us of the responsibility to understand it, to see if we might have contributed to it, to put ourselves in the other person's shoes.  Saying a relationship is irretrievable is a similar cop-out.  It is really saying, I do not want to work at it.  The latter is more honest because it takes responsibility for our choice, the former pretends that the choice is out of our hands.  I wonder if what is unacceptable is to say that anything is unacceptable - of course this statement too is unacceptable!
In the I-Ching Hexagram 54 The Marrying Maiden talks about relationships.
Thunder over the lake: The image of THE MARRYING MAIDEN. Thus the superior man understands the transitory in the light of the eternity of the end.
But every relationship between individuals bears within it the danger that wrong turns may be taken, leading to endless misunderstandings and disagreements. Therefore it is necessary constantly to remain mindful of the end. If we permit ourselves to drift along, we come together and are parted again as the day may determine. If on the other hand a man fixes his mind on an end that endures, he will succeed in avoiding the reefs that confront the closer relationships of people.
The end that endures is to keep our heart open and to work on understanding others and resolving conflict.  This does not mean that there will not be short term conflicts and difficulties, that our emotions will not feel overwhelming but that our short term emotions will not be a good base for the relationship working. Only if we can set our sight on making relationships work can we avoid being blown off course by short term conflicts.  Perhaps the saddest part of this situation was that the two individuals involved had once been the very closest of friends.  If we can love someone once can that really be lost forever?  Everyone in this situation was looking for who was to blame.  I told the two protagonists it was my fault; I should have done a better job of resolving the conflict between them from the start.  My maxim has been not to reject others.  I am prepared to challenge people to see the truth of situations, but I have never sacked someone yet from any organisation.  Some have left by their choice but I have made it clear that they are not being rejected, I have given them choice about whether they wanted to work at the problems they faced with my full support or whether they choose not to.  In the end, even if they have left, they have acknowledged that it was their choice for which they had responsibility.  I think something changes when we have choice.

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.)