Change is good...within a foundation of right behavior.

I have been reading about narcissism in this society.  I have also been listening to and reading various people who are working to help all of us grow and change during this Uranus-Pluto  square that is affecting everyone.  As usual, I have realized that in the effort to help others, some of the messages are missing important details that I feel would be helpful.


One such message is about shame.  It is true that all of us have had shame drilled into us from childhood onward and that some of it is unhealthy for our personal growth.  However, to counter that the light workers who are out there now are telling everyone to work on getting rid of the shame.  They keep saying that shame is bad, that shame is harmful to us, that  we must stop allowing shame to be a part of our lives. The problem as I see it is this:  if narcissism is an epidemic in our culture (and several authors, psychologists and others have said it is) that message is missing an important part.  


It IS important to stop feeling the shame that holds us back from realising our full selves BUT it isn't a good idea to get rid of all shame entirely.  Some shame is necessary to keep us doing what we should as a being among other beings.  For example, the shareholders and CEO of BP should have shame for what they did to the Gulf of Mexico in their drive for profits.  A person should feel shame if they indulge their desires to the point that it breaks up their marriage or another's marriage.  These are just two examples of how shame can be a good tool to deter behavior which harms ourselves or another. 

So while we should look at the shame we feel in our lives and dig through it (Pluto), we should not be sending the message that all shame is bad for us;  it isn't.   Shame serves as a gatekeeper (Capricorn) so that people don't do things which could harm themselves or others. 

Another message I am hearing that is coming from some light-workers is about working on and accepting our shadows.  It is a great idea to work on accepting the shadow side of ourselves but again, it isn't a great idea to use that work to justify acting on our shadow  desires. 

It is especially important to love yourself and  look at and accept your shadow (Pluto)  but a good idea to not indulge it.    Too many light-workers are telling people to accept and love their shadow selves without adding that  important part.  Too many people are using the "I am accepting my shadow" excuse to justify behaviors which are destructive and harmful.  There must be a clarification so that people understand what accepting your shadow really means; loving yourself despite the unacceptable parts you find within while still remaining in the foundations  (Capricorn) of integrity and compassion for yourself and others. 


The last message I am seeing which disturbs me is the biggest one and which has been ongoing since the last Uranus-Pluto aspect (which was a conjunction).  That is the "work on yourself " message.  I agree that we must work on ourselves (Aries)  but since the 1960's, we have been working on ourselves (self-actualization, self-improvement, self-work)  so much that often it is to the exclusion of working on helping our fellow human beings.  The message needs to change.  The message needs to be "work on yourself while you work to help others."  That is a more balanced message.  That is less about "me, me, me,"  (which may have added to the narcissism we are experiencing today and the so-called "Me generation") and more about US (Uranus).  

If we are going to be light-workers to birth the new paradigms we know are coming, we need to make sure we send the right message. We need to make sure people work on freeing themselves of the chains which hold them back while still remembering the healthy parameters in which to live. 

In other words, we can  transform (Pluto) within limits (Capricorn) while embracing the sudden changes and awakenings (Uranus) which are blossoming within all of us (Aries).  That is the message I am sending and one I hope to see more light-workers send as well. 

Social values

The riots in Great Britain speak to me on a visceral level.  They are the voiceless and unheard poor and disenfranchised finally rising up and fairly screaming to be heard.  They have had enough of a set of social values that basically say that if you are without money you are to blame and are somehow inferior to anyone who has been "blessed" with money.   If you re poor, you have no value as a human being;  this is the overriding message of capitalism and religion in the West.  Helping the poor is seen as a weakness; we applaud it with our mouths while we kick the homeless out of their homes for lack of a job or money.  We downgrade an individual's credit score for being unable to pay her bills on time even when that was caused by a greedy corporation laying her off.  Why doesn't the corporation, the shareholder,  have their credit score downgraded for causing the worker to lose their ability to pay?  We punish the innocent and glorify the villain.  We claim to follow a man we call The Christ while doing the opposite of his purported teachings.  


No one is willing to really SEE that these things are the symptom of a disease called capitalism; which is an ideology of every-man-for-himself but white men get everything.  
Let's blame the victim for his or her calamity.  The average human being has allowed those who own everything and who control everything to incite us into fighting amongst ourselves for the crumbs they leave us (begrudgingly as best) in order to divide and conquer and keep us so busy scrabbling about gay marriage or abortion so as to miss their thievery.  They have us brainwashed into believing that if we work hard enough, we can be like them, rich and powerful.  So people actually argue to preserve the rich and their way of life because secretly, they hope to be just as nasty, rich, and powerful as their masters are.  They in essence have allowed the wealthy controlling class to dictate their values and what values they are:  money over humanity, profits over people,  power over  compassion.  In essence, people want to BE the very thing they say despise:  rich, greedy, powerful, and ruthless.  What is it in humanity that makes us so?    


Somewhere in our genetic code there are genes programmed for survival.  Yet on those genes I would guess there are markers which cause us to be greedy, grasping, and ruthless toward our fellow human beings.  We have learned to temper those urges because we found through the ages that we all survive better in a group than living solo but the urges are still there.  These urges rear their ugly heads  and we seem unable to stop them.  We are even our own undoing because so many of us never learn compassion when we experience harm;  instead we lash out first and never develop empathy.


The very thing several historical avatars (Christ, and others) promoted; compassion and caring for one another, has been perverted in the name of feel-good, prosperity religions who enjoy excluding anyone they feel is unacceptable.  How is this Western concept of Christianity any different from the banned but still practiced caste system in India?  Generations of people are born into the belief system and propagate it with high birth rates and fervor.   Yet they scream that they are persecuted.  


When will humanity figure out that we share the same DNA, have the same desires and needs, and need each other more than we need to be rich and powerful? 


I have seen in my own family the results of someone placing money above all else.  My sibling makes about $20,000 a month.  He has made making money his prime goal in life and now he is realizing that his kids are not doing well.  His oldest was on drugs and got pregnant; her baby was born addicted to methadone.  His second child collects shoes and never thinks of the less fortunate.  His third child had OCD and bi-polar from the time he was a child; he is on medications and still has issues in school and at home.  His fourth child is ok for now but his foster child was running away and having oral sex at 15 years old.  He sent her back to her family where she is probably on the streets as an under age prostitute.  None of his kids value education, the environment, charity, or helping others.  He was raised to value education and charity but he placed money first and as such his kids think of nothing else because they have everything, every new gadget that comes on the market.  He suffers because the first born was in and out of jail and has psychiatric problems and behavior issues.  Now he is almost 40 and regretting things but he still doesn't see that his focus on money os not the best way to be.  


My other sibling also focused on money and he had a terrible accident which left him with a lot of money but physically unable to enjoy it.  He died of an overdose of pain killers at age 50.  


Money is ok but we as a society need to stop valuing it and start valuing each other.  We need to value caring, compassion, the environment and each other, no matter what color, religion, nationality, or class status. But we must not be fool enough to think we have to be all nice and sweet;  those who have power over us are like pigs wallowing in their own muddy values. Sometimes the only way to get a pig to understand you is to get down and dirty where he is at and speak in his language.  Doing so doesn't make you "as bad as he is" because you will not remain there; you only do it to get his attention.  That's what the rioters are doing; their ruthlessness is speaking the same language as the heartless wealthy puppeteers who wantonly destroy lives in pursuit of their own agenda.  We all must speak their language to get their attention and once we have it, we must send the message clear and home that we will no longer live by those misplaced values.  And we will no longer allow them to live that way either. 

Changing

I am changing.  This past year has been amazing.  I met a wonderful friend who taught me things I wouldn't have known otherwise.  Though she is more than ten years younger than I, I learned so much from her.  As  result of her and other people as well as inner changes that are coming (Chiron Return, soon) I have made a lot of changes in my life.

The first change was in how I spend my time.  Last year, I would get up, do my class work and if I had time, I would teach my son or help my daughters with school.  Meals were not cooked, life was hectic, the kids suffered and I felt totally out of control and inadequate.  My friend's life of just being a wife and stay-at-home mom seemed out of reach but oh so attractive to me.  This year, I changed my schedule.  Now I do my classwork in the early mornings (after taking some time for myself) and then spend my time with my son when he awakens.  I spend time with my daughters during the day and get dinner on time.  I spend evenings with my husband too.  What changed?  I spend a lot less time doing my school work.  I no longer care if I get "A's" in those classes because doing that took away from the people I love the most and caused me awful angst and tension.  As long as I pass each class, that's good enough.

The second thing I did was I started a diet that is controversial but tweaked it to be healthy and work for me.  I began deliberately losing weight for the first time.  I have lost 110 lbs since May 14th and I feel so much better. I still have 100 lbs to lose yet  I feel sexier, my husband and I fit better in bed,  and the sex has gotten hotter and deeper than ever.  I feel my feelings now too and they are overwhelming me sometimes.  Food used to squelch my feelings;  now I eat so little of it that I feel everything.  Going through menopause and feeling everything makes me weepy.  I am also feeling the return of my old sexual self with this weight loss; this makes me nervous sometimes.  I feel a sense of self too;  for so long I was this non-self and now my kids are going crazy because suddenly Mom is acting like an emotional, energetic, assertive, but rational teenager.

Another change I have been making is that I am trying to understand my feelings; about myself, my husband, my kids, and those people in my life who I think of as friends.  There are people I have emotional connections with and I am trying to honestly explore those connections.  I no longer hide what I feel about them; I have told them.  Some have let me know that they feel the same about me but some elude me and I have to think that they either don't feel the same about me or they do but are not willing (or able) to deal with that right now.  I am less afraid of rejection;  perhaps having some new, close  friends has helped me with that.  In my openness, I have also been honest about my feelings to my husband.  To my surprise, he was not upset about these.  He holds my vulnerable heart gently and with wise caring.  I have always felt very deep feelings for him and, unlike so many people, he is able to handle these.  In fact, I have found that I am a very intense, passionate person; many people are just not able to handle that and I have been bereft of friendships for a long time because I seem so different to people who haven't that intensity or depth. 

One of the hardest changes I have made is about my sexuality.  I have finally been able to again ask for what I want with my husband in a vulnerable but not demanding way.  I used to be very assertive about sex but after marrying my husband, I found him saying no to my requests so much that I felt rejected and stopped initiating  at all.   When we talked about it, he said he felt pressured to perform.  I wondered why every man I have a long-term relationship with always liked sex a lot less than I did.  I felt like it was something  in me they were rejecting, or that I was somehow abnormal in my desire for sex.  I felt hurt and angry.  

Much later, we found out that he has had low testosterone for years.  After getting treatment for it,  things got a little better but it wasn't until I had my son that things really changed;  now I suddenly felt a huge drop in desire and it didn't come back even after a few years had gone by.   I began eating more, we both got fat and we stopped having sex at all.  Finally, my husband sensed the huge change in me and he realized what he was missing.  Finally he started wanting me but it was a bit too late;  I was not feeling desire at all.  Instead I felt humiliated, demoralized and angry.  I began picking on him regularly and he felt angry then, too. 

One day, I was wondering if my teen daughters had ADD; I began reading the symptoms and I realized that my husband had almost all of them.  Suddenly I wasn't so angry anymore.  It explained so much.  I began talking to him about it and he decided to seek a diagnosis and maybe treatment for it.  I stopped picking on him.  He and I were in the nurse's office one day when she told him that he is hurting me because he keeps allowing me to carry too much of the thinking and remembering in the relationship.  I was amazed that she could see that and I began to cry before I could stop it.  He was totally surprised;  even though I had told him I felt  that way, he hadn't seen it until someone else said she saw it too.  She said he needed to take more responsibility for his actions toward me and that doing that would help me feel less pain and anger.  It was like he realized just how much he had been hurting me,  even if unintentionally.  We left that office and both of us changed.  Now we are closer than ever and feeling much better about ourselves and our relationship. 

Both my husband and I also began reading a book given to me which was about the Law of Attraction.  As a realist, I don't fully believe in that in the way it is being taught. The universe Source may be able to give you whatever you want but sometimes it is better for you when it doesn't and you experience misfortune, it is not because you were not clear enough or open enough (which is blaming the victim of that misfortune and thus marginalizing them); it is because you need to have challenges or you don't grow.  We did believe in the positive thinking part so we made an effort to be more positive in our lives and it has helped both of us be more relaxed and open to change.  We have made a five year plan and a ten year plan and we have chosen to make real changes in areas that we need to make changes.  We both feel like gratitude is very important in how we see our lives; living in a state of gratitude means not always seeing only the negative. 

So many changes in just one year.  There are still more to come and I look forward to them all.