Maybe there are many different planets we could have been born on. They are probably not the discrete places we think. The Earth is the dreaming that we live in for now. This resistant material reality, that appears so fixed and external to ourselves, is fluid, it is dreamed. It is a flux of overlapping dreamings. It is mysterious and unknowable. Science can only ever give us a very thin slice of reality, on a 'let's pretend' principle that the universe is real and external to ourselves.
Maybe there are different planets according to the different dreamings that they are expressions of. This planet is not an easy one. It seems to me that we are here not so much to be happy, as to learn stuff and transform. Otherwise why do so many of us seem to spend our lives recovering from our childhoods, like something went wrong and, so it can seem, our real life will begin once we have sorted it all out?
I'm not saying that things don't actually go wrong in childhood, it is horrendous for some people. But it can also give us something to struggle with, that may take most of our lives, and it makes us who we are. It is a warrior thing. We are here to struggle to become who we are, and life will present the discomforts that can push us to do that, if we choose. Or we can self-medicate, as it's called nowadays.Whether people make that choice, and to what degree, is a mysterious thing. Our job can be to help people make that choice more deeply, but we can't do it for them. So you're ill? Do you really want to get well? Why? What is it that gives your life meaning?
'Soul retrieval', as we have come to call it, is something that people usually do for themselves. It is not just about bringing back bits that went missing in childhood. A load of other stuff comes with it. It is about the next stage in our overall unfoldment too. From this point of view, soul loss can serve a purpose, it can be a necessary thing, giving us something much greater than we would have had when it eventually returns, and giving us something to struggle with along the way.
I'd much rather spend time getting to know people and in some way help facilitate them finding their own bits of soul, than engage in what I reckon can sometimes be a fantasy that we, or the spirits, are doing it for them. Sure, we can nudge things along, it's a beautiful and mysterious thing when we do, it's part of our job description. But I think our bigger job is being part of, and witnessing, their lives over a longer period, and providing that reminder of, and connection to Spirit, when needed.
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I offer Zoom astrology readings, by donation. Contact: BWGoddard1 (at)aol.co.uk. My books, The Medicine Wheel and Surfing The Galactic Highways, are available for pre-order on Amazon (or by post from me now.) You can also find me at www.astrotabletalk.blogspot.co.uk and www.shamanicfreestate.blogspot.co.uk
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Maybe the most important part of the service we provide is like an initiation, it is energetic. Something of who we are rubs off on the other person, our connection to Spirit opens up a deeper connection in them, just by them being around us and paying attention. It changes us, too.
I think it can sometimes feel like we've bitten off more than we can chew in this lifetime. Maybe some of us have. I think there has to have been an element of choice, conscious or unconscious, in the lives we were born into. Maybe we just went with what felt familiar, which is often how life itself gets lived. Whether it was that New Age 'contract', where you almost sign on the dotted line with your spirit guides, is another matter. But there is a point in that, it can give a perspective on our difficulties and struggles as something we signed up to, in order to learn from.
Death. We are only here for a short period. As we approach death – in the sense that we may only have 20 or 30 years left – I think the dream-like nature of this existence starts to become clearer. Those things that seemed so important to us when we were younger no longer have the same hold over us. Death can need to be unreal when we are younger, for the living of our naïve dreams is often predicated on that.
What happens when those youthful dreams have been lived, what gives our life meaning now? That is almost a definition of the mid-life crisis, which can begin at any age, and go on for the rest of our lives. Maybe we will just get ill and die. Or maybe our values slowly shift. The sense of being alive is itself meaningful, and maybe that is how it ends up. There is nothing to be deliberately achieved, just life to be a part of.But that doesn’t mean there won’t still be struggles. In a sense, more can be demanded of us as we age. We are hopefully more aligned, more in balance with life itself, which is a deep thing that flows through us. Life can therefore do more with us. There can be deep renewals as we age, a sense of youthfulness that we didn’t have to the same degree when we were physically youthful. We are a part of life, we do not own our lives: realising that makes things so much easier.
We still may not always be happy. But that isn’t the point. The point as we age is to stay at that coal-face of ourselves, the difficult places, that we learn from. There is a deep sense of meaning in that, beside which the pursuit of ‘happiness’ pales. And it’s not for that much longer, either. We know how quickly 20 years passes.
This earth-dreaming is a special place, where we have the opportunity to learn deeply, to transform. Maybe not all dreamings are like that, maybe some are easier, and maybe we will have earned a break for the next lifetime. But make the most of this one while you are here: stay at that meaningful, life-giving coal-face.
