I was recently in contact with an old friend, just long enough for her to try to make a big deal out of my spiritual breakdown two and a half years ago. I shut down the dialogue quickly.
“Sorry to hear that you’ve been having a hard time.”
“HAD a hard time. I’m much better now.”
“It must have been rough for you.”
“I had a breakdown, but it ended up being a breakthrough – so I’m grateful.”
“Yeah, but it’s really hard when you’re going through it though.”
“It’s okay, really. I’m ascending every day now.”
I felt she could not hear me. She couldn’t focus on the life-changing aspect of what happened to me. She wanted to dwell on the negative. I wish she could have been happy for me, instead of sorry.
What I experienced, while painful in the moment, was a necessary step to get to the next level I’m at now. It was a transformational step. And major changes always require some level of pain. This fact is exemplified in the zodiacal sign of Aquarius.
The Message of Aquarius
In our modern world, many people mistake the message of Aquarius, largely, because of the hit song from the 1960s by the same name. As Reverend Bill Darlison says in his book, The Gospel and the Zodiac, people think that it speaks to an imagined “utopian future in which we all take off our clothes, practice free love, and live in peace and harmony. Few understand the actual astrology behind it.”
If the writers had investigated this tradition they would have found that the ‘dawning’ of the Age of Aquarius would be anything but tranquil, harmonious, and loving.”
Aquarius is the sign of transformation. Not just ordinary change, but the kind of change that requires pain. In fact, it requires something to die, so that something new can be born.
This is symbolized by its ruling planets: Saturn and Uranus. While Saturn signifies gradual erosion, Uranus signifies sudden, unexpected, and violent disruption and radical change.
The level of change we must experience to ascend is radical — it “cannot be achieved without turmoil … If something must die, then it’s going to raise a hell of a fuss in the process. And if something is being born, it’s going to cause pain to the thing giving it birth.”
According to astrologer Alan Okin: “We call Saturn’s physical rings by the metaphysical term, the ‘ring-pass-not.’ This phrase indicates that the extent of our perception of life becomes anchored and crystallized until a major crisis occurs that pushes us beyond these limitations of the personal ego … this crisis comes in the form of loss and death.”
Radical Changes in Astrological Ages
The trauma produced by radically changing the focus of our life is evident whenever there is a change of human consciousness, as symbolized by the concept of astrological ages,” says Darlison.
The song “Aquarius” got one thing right. While we are not in the dawn of Aquarius yet, we are approaching the era of Aquarius (a common mistake in calculation). It won’t dawn until 2060. Every era lasts 2060 years. And our current era started at zero.
So, we’re heading for a new era and a new period of total upheaval. “The ‘dawning’ of the Age of Aquarius is when the old structures will be torn down and a new order will arise from the smoking ashes,” according to Darlison.
“Whenever the equinoctial point moves from one constellation to another, we are collectively obliged to come to terms with the principles embodied in the new constellation. This inevitably means radically breaking with the past, a process that can never occur painlessly.
“This applies to the ending of any cycle of human life, including the tiny cycles of an individual existence: The new can only be accepted if the old is allowed to die.
“But Aquarius, the penultimate sign, does not symbolize the end of a cycle. It really signifies openness to the end, preparedness for it, and willingness to accept the pain that the end will involve.
In comparing the spiritual meaning of the zodiac to the Bible, Darlison mentions that the story of Abraham actually represents the movement from one era to another.
“The whole story of Abraham seems to reflect the movement of the equinoctial point from Taurus to Aries. He is supposed to have lived around 2,000 BC, at the beginning of the Aries Age. He is instructed by God to move out of the familiar territory of his homeland and go to an unknown country (could it mean ‘era’). His experience is representative of all new beginnings, when we are called to proceed ‘in faith’ to an unknown future with no certainties and few landmarks.”
Attaining Aquarian Intelligence
In the big picture of our spirit’s journey through this world and out of it, when we reach the level of Aquarius (one sign away from the ending of the entire zodiac cycle), we enter into a phase where we must abandon our individualism and become a contributing member of the collective: A member who is prepared to help bring about the next step — the transformation of society.
“It may be that Aquarius will bring us the awareness that we are indeed part of a vast interconnected life entity, both biologically and psychologically,” notes Darlison.
But the awareness is going to force up everything in us that obstructs us from living our vision.”
Astrologer Liz Greene says, “Before we can experience brotherhood we must first go through the long and bloody process of discovering why we have never been able to experience brotherhood before. No individual becomes conscious of himself instantaneously and without suffering, and no collective does either.”
Darlison further says: “In Aquarius, group-consciousness is expressed as cooperation among free individuals who have sublimated the demands of the ego in order to facilitate the highest good of the greatest number.”
Aquarius is an Air sign, and “Air is the medium of ideas, of debate, of intellectual exploration. Consequently, Aquarius has come to be associated with the democratic spirit, with free participation by equals in the governing process.”
But “to become vehicles for the transformation of society, we have first to transform ourselves: We cannot pour out what we don’t possess (a reference to the Aquarian image of a person pouring water from a jug).
“Such transformation is the goal of the spiritual life in toto. But it has particular application in the Aquarius phase where we are called to assess our contribution to the collective and, more importantly, our willingness to offer it.”
Achieving this lofty objective requires the specific intelligence available to us in Aquarius — detachment.
Detachment of Our ‘Self’
Detachment doesn’t have a nice ring to it for most people. It seems like a cold, distant, and dark quality — certainly not something we should desire to attain.
But the detachment we must embrace is from our own human “self’: from our own very temporary egos, to which we are oh so very attached. In fact, it’s our ego that doesn’t like the sound or implication of the word. As our sense of individuality diminishes, our sense of communal responsibility increases.
Ironically, “cold and darkness symbolize the collective … winter is the time of huddling together for warmth, of relying on our fellows to provide protection against predators, of sharing what we have to ensure the welfare of the community.
“Today, we have all but lost an awareness of these things. They only survive, in somewhat mangled form, in our celebration of Christmas at the time of the winter solstice. But, to our ancestors they would have been real indeed, and the symbolism of light and dark would have had much more meaning for them than it possibly can for us modern humans with our central heating and electric lights.”
The hardships of the dark cold winter of Aquarius “makes us conscious of our vulnerability, of our need for others, of our responsibilities within the groups to which we belong.”
Okin says, “Once we have reached the top of the sacred Mount of Capricorn, we obtain the necessary vision that takes us out of our lower self and leads us to the last of the fixed signs, Aquarius. It is here that we aspire, hope, and idealize how we can contribute to others in a more impersonal and wider sense.”
Inspiration for Your Transformational Journey
So, what is the nature of our interior transformation? How will we know when enlightenment has arrived?
The answer is both simple and not simple. Fundamentally, you will only know it when it occurs — though you may get hints that you are on your way. We can gain some indication of the profoundness of our transformational moment into enlightenment from those who have experienced it.
Darlison says: “It may come suddenly, like the blinding flash that struck Paul from his horse on the Damascus road and which he purported to be Jesus. But more often enlightenment steals upon us gradually.”
Further, he says: “As all spiritual traditions remind us, the awakening of any person is a cosmic event. And when it comes, it turns our interior universe upside down; it shatters our world view; the sun, moon and stars of our interior space come tumbling from their orbits; our certainties arc destroyed; our petty aims and expectations are totally transformed. The world can’t ever be the same again.”
W. B. Yeats seems to be describing the moment in his poem, The Second Coming:
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world; the blood-dimmed tide is loosed; and everywhere; the ceremony of innocence is drowned.”
The Hindu sage Patanjali expresses it thusly: “All of your thoughts break their bonds, your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties, and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.”
The Tibetan Buddhist Dudjom Rinpoche says: “That moment is like taking a hood off your head . . . everything opens, expands, becomes crisp, clear, brimming with life, vivid with wonder and freshness. It is as if the roof of your mind were flying off . . . all limitations dissolve and fall away . . . as if a seal were broken open.”
However it occurs, our radical transformation to enlightened beings focused on the collective versus merely our ‘self’ leaves each individual with a qualitatively different view of the universe from the one he or she previously entertained.
The only certainty is that our spiritual transformation into enlightenment is a goal for each of us to explore alone — detached from our ‘self.’
