In the Stars

Stimulation and healing come in many forms. To take an alternative look, I gave my date of birth and time to an astrologer last week and got some interesting results.

Pluto, which moves very, very slowly, not making it even half a circle around the sun in a lifetime, seems to have an earthquake effect of influence on the various planets it encounters along the way. In my case, during the most intense days of the recovery from surgery to my groin, it will be in conjunction with Mars, a planet that is all about sexuality in particular and masculinity in general.

Any surprise there?!

Possessing absolutely no background information beyond the fact of the injury itself and its planned repair, she was immediately curious, when we met, to know what was going on in the fall of 1973 into '74 when there was a similar energetic opportunity in my life. It astounds me that without a prompt she would accurately pinpoint the only other time in my life when I have been significantly unhealthy.

In a soccer game, a hit to my lower back shifted a vertebra, causing chronic pain for months. Finally, a look at an X-ray brought the dire warning that I should avoid all contact sports for the rest of my life in fear of another jolt that could leave me paralyzed. This negative attention to my pelvic area, a wound to my sacral chakra again, took me twice to the infirmary that fall and dropped me into a deep depression.

After that Christmas, complaining of bizarre symptoms, a neurologist prepared me for exploratory brain surgery, convinced I had one of four ailments, all of which ended with death in the near future. Fortunately, my mother had just read about a new technology for scanning named after some sort of cat and got me into the University of Pennsylvania hospital where they learned it was just a pernicious variation on Mononucleosis.

Emotionally, at the time, I was in college discovering things about my manhood that a particular young woman was able to arouse in me, feelings that made my face and other parts blush, my heart pump strongly, but my mind turn over and over and over, hot and cold, depending on her proximity. The affair was so confusing because my feet each morning were still very squarely on the ground, not at all the ten feet above that I thought was the proper definition of love.

My astrologer and I discussed the possibility that this previous time in my life was a missed opportunity to fully embrace my masculinity. When considering the differences between now and then, I recognized that in the first, I was very shut down and detached from the process, too frightened and overwhelmed, barely able to find the energy to stabilize my body, much less learn what it might take to heal my wounded soul.

These many years of business and two failed marriages since seem like so many stumbles and bumbles as a result. The powerful force of Pluto behind Mars, combined now with all of this emotional study, ripens the medication to catapult me into a new and better way of being in the world.

In early 2012, my astrologer continued, Saturn will have completed its second cycle in my lifetime, a transition typically into a period of living that benefits from the wisdom and understanding gained through experience. She wondered, therefore, what of significance might have happened around my twenty-eighth or ninth year when the first cycle was nearing completion, a time of movement from youthful adventure to a more substantial adulthood.

Immediately, I remembered a month of working on a house far enough down the Coast I stayed there for days by myself between trips home, pretty much the first time to be alone since adopting my family. Being off-season and very private, I witnessed three different episodes of sex on the beach directly below me, strong and compelling evidence that other people really liked to have fun too and I might not be so strange as I feared for the ways I wanted to play. I know I behaved differently after that month.

In retrospect, however, I do not believe I fully absorbed this confidence into my heart, and every other aspect of my life, so much as act occasionally so when it is convenient. Living largely as a mealy-mouthed visionary, I have hoped for something better, but not gone “balls-out” to get there.

Believing a kinder-gentler man is possible, I patiently asked my employees for better workmanship, forgiving their sloppy mistakes instead of demanding the same accountability and integrity I expect of myself. Surrounding myself with less, I ultimately am less and receive, in return, an exact measure of what I produce.

Grateful to have someone to love in my life, I have been less concerned about being loved in return.

My work as a new warrior teaches me that assertiveness is plenty fine and definitely sexy in a man. The dominant, controlling and insensitive characteristics that sometimes come along hand-in-hand have never been appropriate and are no longer welcome. The kinder man can still be firm, however: fiercely direct and hot-blooded, standing his ground, even gaining ground, but able also to give it up when he is not right.

I have adopted a mission statement that says, “I create a world of passion, prosperity and tolerance by loving action and celebration.” The words are tacked up before me on my bulletin board, a measuring sentence for every other word I type. What goes outwards and comes back is a reflection of what goes on inside, an ever-evolving process regardless of Saturn, Pluto, Mars or the state of my urethra.




Unbalanced or walking straight and tall, I must at least be conscious.

Please share with your friends

Tweet