From Where Does Your Moral Compass Originate?
Q: From Where Does Your Moral Compass Originate?
A: I’m enveloped in a tempest of torrential empathy. Heartbreak abounds. Underneath the anger, blame, and confusion there exists a deep wound, a festering and blistering laceration gushing in the daylight for all to smell--- and it is psychological. Although we are very much engrained to look to sides for an answer, if we go within, we may find that both “sides” are there. The exalted and the frightful, the noble as well as the unspeakable exist inside the psyche. As within so without. Are we willing to see the hatred that infects our unconscious? This is a good time for prayer. Eventually, amidst the journey of our own humanity, we will have to bear witness to that which we have avoided. Right now in the current episode of “This Is America”, we have an incredible scene to chew on, digesting some and vomiting the rest.
While attuning my ears to hear from all “sides” of the spectrum as to compute a “fair” case within the halls of my internal justice system, I am blasted by the waves of relentless emotional storms that are conjured in such a process. To be clear, I do not condone any acts of violence and my approach to “warfare” only occurs on the battlefield of my mind. If we could take refuge in our inner work, and work through our depth of passion and frustrations from that place, I trust the world would be and still could be a different one.
Out of the thousands of issues at hand, the concern over censorship feels like a yes… and; there are many primal screams around the censorship of free speech as of late. I would like to share my thoughts on this inspired by a conversation with my step-father, Fire Chief, and Firefighter of nearly 45 years. I agree we have a responsibility to care for and stand for the precious right for our voice to be heard. Yet there is a difference between having the right to speak our mind and running into a crowd and yelling “fire” (actually illegal) when there isn’t one to see what happens or just because you feel like it (or worse, for all the conspiritualists and conspiracists---because of an addiction to drama and dystopian fantasy—Mr. President). Free speech does not mean that one can incite violence. And another question for us all, do you really think you are free?
True freedom is a state of being and doesn’t come from violence. How many wars have been fought in the name of this virtue? I wonder how many were of necessity rather than of pure greed or desire for dominion over another’s culture or land? The seeds of war come from somewhere and if we dive deep enough, it is possible to find them within your very own mind. If we can get real with ourselves, maybe we can begin to heal, and healing is what we desperately need.
This new moon in Capricorn on January 12th indicates healing is possible, yet not without some painful reality checks and deep inner work. With this new moon conjunct Pluto, intense transformation is the message of this cycle while the true catapult arrives in the form of Mars conjunct Uranus on January 20th. Power, Inner Work, Depth, Equal Challenge, Growth, and Resolution. As with any January new moon, not only does it create a theme for the moon cycle ahead, it also sets the tone for the year to come.
Although I lean left in various realms of my politics and values, I also deeply appreciate some of the values reflected by the right. We are not one-sided, we carry the seeds of potential virtue within the full spectrum just as much as we carry the shadow. It is our responsibility not to enact or incarnate these egoic tendencies (shadow aspects), only to observe them, understand and analyze them so we can work to transcend them with great support from within. True integration for me is not to become our shadow by embracing it but to acknowledge that it exists, know it, and transmute. The more educated I am about what lurks beneath in my unconscious, the more I can do to resolve it. If I ignore it, my psyche might very well be taken over one day by the violent sordid characters that skulk below (see recent capitol riots as a metaphor). If we are learning anything in the eternal mirror of this moment, it is we have to be vigilant and that there is deep work to do for real and actual change.
Assessing morality is a tough pill to swallow. Who is the judge of another’s moral compass? From here, it appears that this is such an intimate point of reference within us. It is a measure of who we truly are in our thoughts, actions, and words. That which drives and motivates all ways of being and is created as a result of our relationship with our true nature. Are we aligned? Are we far from our center?
When we look at the full spectrum of values and principles from left to right, we can see that virtue takes no side, only each end of the spectrum resonates with various groups of virtue more than another. In politics, we are living primarily in a two-party system - liberals and conservatives, or for the French, who were influential in this ideological framework, the party of movement and the party of order. Astrologically, this is currently mirrored by Uranus and Saturn. The clash of these titans (squaring one another), Uranus in Taurus and Saturn in Aquarius, will occur three times this year in February, June, and December - disruption, uprise, controversy, challenging the system, contraction expansion - change change change...
Uranus represents freedom and a progressive independent approach while Saturn is more concerned with authority, structure, and order. If we can see these archetypes objectively and outside of our preference of ideology, perhaps we can access more understanding and compassion allowing for what the Buddhists refer to as a middle path; A path that is not defined by one extreme or another, but one that has found the ability to experience a viewpoint that can listen without reaction and respond from integration.
Recently we experienced the Great Conjunction between Saturn and Jupiter at zero degrees Aquarius, and although I would argue that this does not indicate an exact entrance into the Age of Aquarius, we have entered into a twenty-year journey in the Aquarian realm and a new 200-year cycle of these royal planets in air signs. Aquarius is ruled by both Uranus and Saturn; it is the sign that can intrinsically understand both of these radically different energetics and archetypes. Astrologically, it makes sense that we would be seeking intellectual resolve and innovative solutions in these desperate times under the Aquarius watch.
In recent months we have seen many who have previously identified as very left-leaning shift dramatically to a radical right. We have seen deeply rooted conservatives begin to open to new perspectives of a more liberal nature. Maybe the question isn’t if you are liberal or conservative, a mover or of order, Democrat or Republican, but to ask ourselves this… “from where is the origin of my moral compass?”
We cannot change the world until we accept we are the world. This is the new conversation.
