Astrology Is Not A Belief System

I read in my Birth Chart that beauty is important to me, so I took a good look at my life and realized that actually it’s true. I could see how beauty had played a huge role in my life, from the clothes I bought, to the art I hung on my walls, to the places I chose to live, to the girlfriends I went out with. “Yes”, I thought, “beauty is important to me”. The chart is true.

Oops, big mistake. I had just fallen into the trap of making astrology a belief system. I believed that what I had read was the absolute truth, that this was who I was, a man who loved beauty. So I started to look a bit deeper to what was actually driving that desire for beauty. I’m not saying that appreciating beauty is a bad thing but If I simply accept that this IS who I am, then I’m bound to the belief that beauty is important for the rest of my life, and that would prevent me from ever appreciating anything or anyone that didn’t look good.

With a little inner exploration, I remembered that my mother had been obsessed with looking beautiful. Everything always had to be spotlessly clean in the house, she always dressed immaculately, her friends were equally immaculate, she always worried about looking thin (society’s answer to appearing attractive) and if neighbours or friends appeared with a new beautiful possession on display her immediate reaction was to long for the very same thing. The importance of beauty in all things had, without me even realizing, been a constant recurring theme in my youth, and I had, without even realizing, learned this very trait from my mother.

The thing is that once we acknowledge a trait, we begin to notice it wherever it pops up in our life. Then, because it is noticed, we create that little bit of space for a new choice to be made. Where once we simply acted out of conditioning, now we can see that conditioning playing out, and that frees us to choose whether to simply follow old patterns or instead do something totally different.

My Birth Chart made me aware of my obsession with beauty. But that doesn’t mean that I’m stuck with being that way for the rest of my life! It doesn’t mean that I’m always going to be a slave to it! What the Birth Chart has done is brought to my attention an unconscious pattern that was ruling my life and which was, ultimately, limiting my choices and restricting my perspective. By making me aware of this, I can now accept that aspect of my character and recognize how it developed. I may still instinctively continue to find beauty to be important, but at least now I don’t have to make all my choices based on old robotic conditioning. I may choose beauty, I may not, but the difference is that I’m free to make that choice without an unconscious program forcing my hand.

Birth Charts are designed to make you aware of your own patterns of behavior. They are NOT designed to condemn you to a life of slavery to those patterns. For heavens sake, don’t do what so many people do and turn astrology into a belief system. It wasn’t designed to be believed, it was designed as a tool to help you become aware of unconscious patterns that are ruling your life and your decisions. Once you become aware of them, they change from a part of you that was running your life to simply being a part of you. You can honour them as such, without trying to get rid of them (to do so would only ensure their continued empowerment) and you can stand in front of the mirror and acknowledge that your character is made up of many anomalies, quirks, oddities and unexplained behaviours, all adopted or designed in response to everything you’ve ever seen.

Any information, guidance, practice or art that points you in the direction of yourself, and that helps you to notice how you are in life and then to integrate that recognition, without asking you to change who you are or be someone else, is a good thing. It’s not about changing, if change is going to happen it will do so of its own accord. It’s about allowing yourself to be the you that you discover, in all your glory. This is who you are, warts and all. Acknowledging and being at peace with all of it allows you to be the resplendent fullness of you without being a slave to any part of it. This is true freedom – when you can simply be who you are – a fully integrated human being. And that ultimate love of yourself, that oneness with yourself, can only create love with everyone else.

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