Cosmology & the Course

reclaiming the sky

I start with why astrology is the practical application of astronomy. I cover gnostics and A Course in Miracles, the gender of the unified self, and SpiderMind. I include a tease from Isaac Middle’s Wholesome Vedic Astrology, with a promise of more to come. And AI was invented just for Amy. It's her docile pet, following her around, rubbing up against her legs inbetween dull jobs, looking for attention. She's tamed the feral synthetic beast. Scattered throughout are some of the pretty pictures it’s fetched for her, along with one from Kathleen and a meme stolen from … KTAWK? Conspiracy Sarah? Thanks to all!

I met yesterday with one of my readers who happened to be in town. We discussed economics, politics, metaphysics and the gnostics, who he had studied extensively. He stated his assertion that words and logic were an impediment to knowledge. His belief was that Reality was knowable through psychedelics or meditation and could perhaps be communicated through the symbology of art, music or poetry, but not straightforward language. I thought this was very ungnostic of him.

The word ‘gnostic’ means ‘knowing’ and I interpret that as someone who behaves as if God/ Truth/ Reality is knowable. These three words are interchangeable so use whichever has the least baggage for you.

The word ‘symbology’ itself contains logos or word. It’s a language of symbols. When symbols in art are detached from meaning in words, like ‘Abstract #3,’ they merely obscure through snobbery, I think. The word ‘theology’ means words discussing the divine, something that’s been relegated to Church-sanctioned scholars but really belongs to all of us. It’s substituted authority for our own thoughts.

Cosmology is discourse about ‘the material universe as an ordered whole.’ Later it becomes "the branch of metaphysics which discusses the ultimate philosophical problems relating to the existence of the universe." Astrology began as a telling about the stars, or perhaps seeing the stars as words that are telling something to us.

In my book I quote Susan George defining logos as meaning or purpose. She states that ecology or eco-logos, the purpose of serving life, should supersede economy or eco-nomos, the set of rules that govern life.

In the same way we could see astronomy or astro-nomos as the set of rules that govern the stars. It’s the logic of their relationships seen as a 2D screen from earth’s perspective where, from the dawn of consciousness, humans have connected entities millions of light-years away from each other into coherent wholes as constellations.

Wholesome astrologer Isaac Middle invokes this image: “Imagine, for example, our soul as a Shooting Star: bursting through the Sky Clock at the exact commencement of our conscious existence here, and taking with it the exact energetic imprint of the Luminaries at that moment.” I offer Isaac’s poetic description as a tease because this post is to set up one in the future delving into his deep education in Vedic astrology.

Astrology or the astro-logos is behaving as if the stars have meaning and purpose, as if there is a consciousness behind the design that governs their movement. Even more, it entertains the possibility that we, as individuals, matter to this consciousness as much as the stars. It’s not the stars that govern our lives but the trajectory of our lives that’s been aligned with the most beneficial cosmos for our life’s purpose. What could be of more practical use than studying this?

---

one-mind dreaming

When I use the term ‘consciousness,’ I don’t mean a creator God who made both heavenly and earthly bodies. I’m not dogmatic that the world of separation into bodies exists. There are those who object to my use of the term dogma for my sole (soul) belief that people are morally equal. Yet the primary dogma that people hold is that they exist, separate from everyone else, and therefore so must the world.

This dogma goes unnamed because it’s a paradigm so deeply buried as assumption no other choice seems possible. Let’s look at a passage from A Course in Miracles for why that might be:

This is salvation's keynote: 
What I see reflects a process 
in my mind, which starts
with my idea of what I want. 
From there, the mind makes up 
an image of the thing the mind 
desires, judges valuable,
and therefore seeks to find. 
These images are then projected 
outward, looked upon, esteemed 
as real and guarded as one's own.

From insane wishes comes 
an insane world. From judgment 
comes a world condemned.
And from forgiving thoughts 
a gentle world comes forth, 
with mercy for the wholly Loved
of God, to offer her a kindly home 
where she can rest awhile before 
she journeys on to help her siblings 
walk ahead with her, and find 
the way to heaven and to God.

The original is in iambic pentameter, Shakespeare’s rhythm, except where I changed ‘holy Son of God’ to ‘wholly Loved of God.’ I also, in my readings, change God the Father to God the Lover and ‘he’ to ‘she’ to represent us in the singular. If we personify God as masculine, and I agree we should, the gender of the unified Self has to be feminine, otherwise half of humanity is left out of divinity.

If men want to speak of the Goddess, they can personify humanity as He. But they can’t have both. For millennia, women have been told the words mankind, Man and the universal He include women. If we were not supposed to take offense for the last 3000 years, the same goes for men and the universal She. Suck it up, buttercup!

What the Course passage shows is that the desire for superiority conjures the image of what you want—to be surrounded by people who are less than you. Yuck! Now no one else is as trustworthy, decent or honorable. Congratulations! Along with your superiority you need to feel afraid because who knows what ‘those people’ who aren’t like you would do?

If we are OneMind dreaming, we are a mind divided. A part still re-members our ‘Right Mind,’ the fluid unity with each other and God. This is called the Christ-mind but I would like to find a feminine alternative for that. WombMind? The SacreMind? SpiderMind? JellyFishMind?

And then there’s the fragmented ‘Left-behind’ Mind that operates from a death wish to burn it all down. Some gnostics talk about the demiurge god who rules this planet. That god is us in our nightmare mind, the suicide wish of an eternal being, one that enacts the bloody sacrifice again and again on all its shadow selves until exhausted.

William Hunter Duncan wrote an important and beautiful post on sacred masculinity and The King Archetype:

The King Archetype

It turns out that ‘king archetype’ is somewhat redundant because arche- is the same root as archon meaning ruler. Therefore it’s the ideal model of a king. Hier-archy is the divinely ordained inheritance order of the right to rule.

Astrology uses celestial zodiac and planetary archetypes, and also lunar characters. In the psychology of Jung, archetype is an unconscious prototype. In Late Winter Thoughts, William quoted from The King Within by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette on the Shadow selves:

The animosity we feel is ultimately toward ourselves, but it often takes a lot of work before we can realize this. The Shadow endorses this work because it longs for reintegration. It is the Shadow’s method to lead us into holding our impossibly defensive, illogical positions—in order to confront us with whatever psychic complexes we would rather forget. Our “real world” hatreds are most usually against these inner complexes, and our Shadow works by repetition compulsion to call our attention to them.

Rather than face any rejected qualities, either positive or negative, within ourselves, we frequently deal with our Shadow by projecting those qualities onto others. As an Ego, we don’t project them. But our shadow does so in order to focus our interest on it’s feelings, wishes and agendas. Our shadow induces us to see other people we disapprove of or dislike in colors that are only marginally like their “true” colors but which are colors that the Shadow itself possesses.

Jung believed withdrawing a projection of the Shadow and owning it as a part of ourselves requires enormous moral courage. He also believed that what we will not face within our psyche we will be forced to confront in the outer world. So, if we can claim our Shadow’s qualities, and learn from them, we defuse much of the interpersonal conflict we would otherwise encounter. People who have served as the screens for our Shadow’s projections become less odious, and more human. At the same time, we experience ourselves as richer, more complex, and more powerful individuals.

Jungian dreamwork and shadow work mirror the core concept of A Course in Miracles, that everyone is an aspect of our Self. I’ll end with a final quote:

Salvation is a promise, 
made by God, that you would 
find your way to Him at last.
It cannot but be kept. 
It guarantees that time 
will have an end, 
and all the thoughts
that have been born in time 
will end as well. 
God's Word is given every mind 
which thinks that it has separate 
thoughts, and will replace these 
thoughts of conflict 
with the Thought of peace.

Salvation is undoing 
in the sense that it does nothing, 
failing to support the world 
of dreams and malice. 
Thus it lets illusions go. 
By not supporting them,
it merely lets them quietly 
go down to dust. 
And what they hid 
is now revealed; an altar to 
the holy name of God
whereon his word is written, 
with the gifts of your forgiveness 
laid before it, and the memory 
of God not far behind.

We are the only Word of God. And that word is, it’s going to be okay.

---

A viewer warned his loved ones that he was putting my 'crazy' in his echo chamber. To live up to the warning, I bring on the crazy by talking about ultimate reality with Sufi sayings, Jewish legends, free-will astrologer Rob Brezsny and Terence McKenna. I tell the story of a mole turned hawk, and Russell Brand kissing Yuval Noah Harari's forehead. I cite Kurt Vonnegut's 'karass' in the disorganized religion of Bokonon and quote Caitlin Johnstone on being ineffable. I end with a simpler explanation of Charles Eisenstein's Parallel Timelines and my craziest theory to date, involving the word 'tantric'.

From A Course in Miracles, I look at what forgiveness is and what it is NOT. I trace my journey from the spiritual exercise of applying this to the face of evil himself, Hitler, and the revelations of my subsequent research into history. I then question the origins of fascism with Mussolini's surprising manifesto. And I answer a commenter who believes we're X missed meals away from murdering our neighbors and the most dangerous people are those who think people are inherently good.