We’re in the middle of a UK General Election campaign, and it’s all about the story, or narrative. Who’s story do you believe:
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- “We inherited rubbish from the other lot and our plan has sorted it out. We had to do things you didn’t like and there was no point taxing the hard working rich more as the economy depends on them treating us as a tax haven. We must carry on with the plan. Trust us.”
- “Things were going fine till the global crash, which we managed well. We were just recovering when that lot took over and stalled it. We’re only just getting back to where we were and hard working ordinary people are worse off. The rich should pay a little bit more.”
- “We stopped the worst excesses of that lot after the mess left by the other lot. Unfortunately, we had to do things we’d promised not to do. They’re both rubbish, at least till we negotiate the next coalition.”
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Yes it’s all about the story and what you believe. From an early age children are informed and inspired by stories. Stories give meaning to our lives and choices.
There are parallels with astrology, which also lives in story land, helping us to tell stories about our lives and how we fit into the cosmos.
In an astrological consultation, we aim to use the birth chart to help make sense of the story of the client’s life, and to uncover the stories that they unconsciously told themselves as a result of early experiences in the family and out in the world. Once uncovered, the stories can be changed. Similarly, when using our own chart for ourselves.
Science also tells us stories, but about a strange world that is foreign to our experience, in that it is devoid of meaning, due to it’s self-imposed myth of objectivity. Sadly, this can lead to a world that appears devoid of meaning and values, which led to the despair of many existentialists and the so-called death of God.
Of course this is as extreme as the overbearing religions that science originally supplanted. Today we increasingly seek a world view where meaning and story have a place, where the objective and the subjective are in some sort of synergy. Astrological psychology is much at home in such a world.
What of the story of astrological psychology itself? Has it occurred to you that this story is told, maintained and developed by its practitioners and students, which includes you the members and students of APA. You are the holders of the flame, and it is you who will determine whether it is left frozen in aspic as an interesting diversion of the late 20th century, or whether it is taken forward and developed in the new world of meaning.
Postscript
A fine example of evolution and renewal of the story of astrological psychology is provided by Sue Lewis’s recent book Astrological Psychology, Western Esotericism, and the Transpersonal.
Some of the ideas in this post were inspired by reading Charles Eisenstein’s excellent book ‘The Ascent of Humanity’.
That’s the incredible thing about astrological psychology. Our personal story, the meaning of our life, is all there, contained in our birth chart. All it needs is the key, the training by the APA, to unlock it and bring it to life….as alive as the story that little girl is reading to her teddy!
As a happy synchronicity, readers of ‘The Beacon’ magazine April-June 2015, published by Lucis Publishing, may have noticed the article ‘It’s a Myth that a Myth is a Myth’ by Simon Marlow. Marlow refers to myths as making the truth ‘come alive’, a theme very consonant with my own post on ‘story’ helping to make sense of our lives.