Best Friends in the Age of Aquarius
Part 1
Music has always been amazingly valuable to me as the words of a song can convey what is not only on our minds, but is also in the collective unconscious. Carl Jung describes this as a rhizome of archetypes that connects us on a much deeper level of our existence. The feelings and emotions evoked in a song allow us to feel our inherent connection to each other; the words convey what is rising up from the unconscious that wants to be known.
In my 20s, I lived in Austin, Texas where Outlaw Country Music by Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Jerry Jeff Walker permeated the radio waves as none of us had cell phones or internet. One favorite song was called Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love). Waylon Jennings released it alone. Then Willie Nelson joined him and the song, written by Chips Moman and Bobby Emmons, escalated in popularity. Those of us living in Austin knew every word and we sang it out loud with passion and gusto. The words came to my mind this morning as I sat down to start writing.
Let’s go to Luckenbach, Texas
With Waylon and Willie and the boys
This successful life we’re livin’
Got us feuding like the Hatfields and McCoys
between Hank Williams’ pain songs and
Newberry’s train songs and ‘Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain‘
Out in Luckenbach, Texas ain’t nobody feelin’ no pain
So baby, let’s sell your diamond ring
Buy some boots and faded jeans and go away
This coat and tie is choking me
In your high society you cry all day
We’ve been so busy keepin’ up with the Jones
Four car garage and we’re still building on
Maybe it’s time we got back to the basics of love
It’s probably true that getting back to the basics of love for each other is ultimately the answer to all the divisive us against them/Hatfields and McCoys mentality that exists in and around us on a daily basis. However, true love with each other is not as simple as the collective myths about romantic love would have us believe. To further complicate matters, there are many remnants of the Age of Pisces that are actually keeping us from evolving.
Desiring to be “in-love” (which is strongly felt in the initial romantic bliss of a new relationship) as the main criteria for “true love,” has resulted in many delusions and deceptions. These Piscean, Neptunian fantasies are so indoctrinated in our culture that our capacity to love real people has degenerated into cheating on our partners if we are married and/or moving from one person to another if we are single in search of an ideal that doesn’t exist; or it only exists when we don’t know each other very well.
The myth of Psyche and Eros tells the story well. When Psyche lit a lamp over Eros and some wax fell on him, she saw him. As described in the myth, he woke up and flew away because he had told her not to. She could love him ONLY if she could not see him. If you haven’t read this myth, there are copies all over the internet. I suggest you read it and allow the words to really sink in.
The collective unconscious is where myths, primordial images consisting of the archetypes that we, Astrologers, know as planets reside. These are drives or patterns of psychic content, predispositions we have inherited from our parents and our ancestors. These ancient imprints constitute a dynamic process in the psyche — known, but invisible to us.
Because we are each made up of several and sometimes contradicting archetypes, they can become repressed or split-off from our conscious awareness and form what Jung called complexes. These split-off splinter personalities in the unconscious, Carl Jung called our shadow complexes. Unconsciously, we want to be mirrored and so we search for an “other” that will complete us and fulfill the indoctrinated collective dream of perfect love.
Romantic stories and movies that promise this kind of love give rise to the expectation that we should all expect an intoxication and euphoria from our human partners on a daily basis and it should last forever. However, as the high rate of divorces and failed relationships show us, after we get to know the real person and our projections fade, we may end up telling ourselves, “this must not be the right partner for us after all.”
Another aspect of this is the longing for a person who we can’t have for whatever reason. Maybe they are not interested right away, they are married or in another relationship, they live far away, they are of a different sexual orientation, etc. There are too many reasons to describe why longing and pining away for someone we cannot have exists and fuels a fire of passion and longing. Longing seems to be another part of this process of “falling in love” as it evokes fantasies of who we think they are and what being with them will be like. Remember, we don’t really know them!
When I first learned Astrology, my main interest in studying this symbolic language was to understand why relationships were repeating for me and the people I was closest to. What was the mystery behind this revolving door that we put ourselves through hell to accomplish. Now, after twenty-five+ years of hearing people’s stories, watching people going in and out of marriages or relationships, painful and disheartening experiences in my own life, I and others have reached the conclusion that we will have to make a concerted effort to usher in a brand new paradigm for relating in the Age of Aquarius. It won’t be an easy transition, but if we want to have what Carl Jung called a psychologically conscious relationship, then perceptions will need to change about our views of true love.
Aquarius is a completely different archetype with very different goals than Pisces (I will have more to say about that next month in Part 2).
PARADOX
There is a paradox in life, and to live with this new way of being, we will have to accept the fact that everything in the psyche comes in pairs of opposites. We must learn to live with ambiguity and uncertainty instead of black and white, either/or thinking. My teacher, Jungian analyst J. Pittman McGehee, D.D. says, “He helps people navigate a gray world.” As I have said in previous articles, the biggest and first hurdle is to acknowledge that there are people inside us in our unconscious that we do not know. I don’t care how old you are, how many years of experience you have as an astrologer or a psychotherapist, psychiatrist or Jungian analyst, there is still more of you to know. As long as we are here on this planet, we are still growing because the gradual gradient of self-realization is toward wholeness. The unconscious in us wants to be known and therefore, everyone is on a quest to find their missing selves.
Many of the idealistic and illusive notions of the Piscean Age have caused much pain and loneliness in our relationships instead of the grand illusion of unending bliss which is what was promised. There is nothing lonelier than being married to someone you hardly know or even like. Unless a couple can get to know, love and respect each other over a long period of time, have things in common for pleasure and comfort, communicate authentically even when it’s hard to do so and make a conscious effort to see and own their shadow side, many will go on looking for that spark which we speak of as chemistry. This emotional compulsion and fascination are initially an unconscious psychological projection of ourselves and is largely comprised of our shadow or Anima/Animus, our soul, contra-sexual images.
Astrology, an Aquarian Age Blessing
There is no better psychological system to help an individual see into their many selves than astrology. Think of the planets as needs or drives we all have. Our time of birth, place, and date provide us a map of the heavens which constitute a blueprint of our psyche at that particular moment of time. The sign of Libra, ruled by the planet Venus is the astrological sign of the scales symbolizing the desire for balance, harmony, peace, and beauty. In the natural zodiac, Libra is the ruler of the 7th House (marriage, partnership and open enemies, i.e. the shadow in us all). EVERYONE has Libra somewhere in their birth chart, and I truly believe it comes back to the Libra part of us to learn about our opposites. To develop a truly conscious relationship, owning our shadow is the first step into our unconscious and the best place to begin “the work” is in our one-on-one relationships whether past or present. Reflecting and remembering our history and memories of these relationships will help us know ourselves.
Additionally, our Venus and aspects (conjunctions, squares, and oppositions = mathematical angles) to Venus will give us indicators into our particular drives or needs for affection; what we find valuable; and who we will find attractive. Our particular Venus best describes the receptive feminine energy in our psyche.
Like diamonds, we have so many facets and some are easier to identify than others. Many unknown parts we project onto our partners and that dynamic is the beginning of every relationship that becomes close or intimate. This works fine for a time, but a major reason we are drawn to a particular individual through love or hate is to see our many facets in the mirror they are holding up for us, although often to us it looks like it’s only in them, not in us.
Synchonistically, this meeting often occurs in alignment with the transiting planets and when a potential partner comes into our energy field, it appears to us to be a fated encounter. I see this time and time again by looking at the birth charts of those who are in relationships or married. It is no accident as both have similar energy that has drawn them to each other. Then, especially in the beginning, our unconscious opposites will be constellated through the other person; otherwise no attraction will take place.
These character traits are both positive and negative, so it’s not just negative traits that get projected. When positive, it is a magnified idealization that we don’t think we are capable of ourselves, so we project it outside into the “other,” and they will live it out for us so our shadow can also be desirable, undeveloped potential.
When they are negative traits, they usually go against our ideals of what we consider to be civilized or moral behavior, and we will find these intolerable and repulsive. These don’t show up until we are deep into a contractual marriage or committed in an intimate partnership. Because projective identification is unconscious, we have no idea we are projecting – it is a very common ego defense mechanism. We will not allow this realization to come into our minds because it is too painful for our fragile and defended ego to recognize that we are not who we think we are. We shove these parts of us even further into the unconscious and allow them to carry our shadow for us. As if scripted, a power struggle begins when we try to change in them what we actually need to become conscious of and embrace in ourselves.
Jung says,
“Logically the opposite of love is hate, and of Eros, Phobos, (fear); but psychologically it is the will to power. Where love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking. The one is but the shadow of the other.”
— Carl Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, paragraph 78
There is a transpersonal purpose in letting go of the idealistic Piscean notion of romantic love. As an evolving collective, we need to understand that eventually this dissolution, separation and sometimes acute animosity has to happen so that we can differentiate from each other. When we see each other’s humanity, our imperfect selves, we can now see and accept each other’s differences, faults, flaws as well as virtues. This is actually the beginning of an opportunity for a mature, real and conscious relationship which initially can be very painful and disappointing.
“Seldom or never does a marriage develop into an individual relationship smoothly and without crisis. There is no birth of consciousness without pain.”
— Carl Jung, The Development of the Personality, paragraph 331
I want to share an excerpt from my Shadow Dance Workbook in Examples at the end of Chapter 2.
I want to share an excerpt from my Shadow Dance Workbook in examples of Shadow Work dialogues between myself and my audience participant.
Audience: “I got the same message when my husband died. I thought that he was my soul mate and he completed me. When he died, I thought that part was ripped out of me. First, I swore to myself that I’d never love again, but gradually, after about five years, I got it that I’ll never love that way again. What I saw as love was completely fantasy and what I’ll bring to the next relationship, if there is one out there for me is not that we need each other for completion, but that we choose to be together while we work on our own completion. A good analogy is two logs going down the river. They each have their individual path, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that each log is going down the river. No matter how close those logs get to each other, if they bump up against each other, they are still on their own individual journey. Something about that shared journey has to complement the individual journey. If it takes over, it never works, because then it throws both people out of balance and it can’t work. You have to have individual accountability, and if you put God on a person, then they will do whatever it takes to keep that intensity and glow alive, but a part of them has to die to maintain this illusion because they can’t really be themselves. They can’t be true to who they are, and their Shadow will be more and more split-off because they need you to love them as the magnificent person you’ve dreamed them up to be.”
Rebeca: “Yes, that makes sense now. One guy kept saying to me, “You don’t know me,” and it took years for me to understand what he was trying to tell me. We have to tell each other the truth even when it hurts to do so. We want to know who that person really is, not who they’re pretending to be for their sake as well as ours. At the same time, we have to make commitments to our relationships for there to be a safe place to do shadow work.”
Rebeca Eigen
Rebeca Eigen, an astrologer for 25+ years and author of The Shadow Dance & the Astrological 7th House Workbook specializes in relationships. From every day decisions, to critical life-altering moments, Rebeca shares with you her practical wisdom and guidance for your life’s journey in becoming who you are meant to be.
https://www.shadowdance.com/
