Today has called for me to share something rather personal, that I’m curious to know if anyone else out there experiences and might be brave enough to verify. Does anyone else out there ever find that something moves them into a state of existential tears over something that seems akin to “collective suffering?” Not often, but from time to time, something wells up from within that seems to touch some sort of transpersonal/collective vein, and I end up crying over something that doesn’t directly have anything to do to me, and it’s a rather complex matter to get at the “root” of it. This morning was one such occasion for me. (I also realize that today signals a full moon [in its native natal home of Virgo for me], which could have something to do with this release…) I started crying over some sense of pain, suffering, and unhappiness that seems to permeate an aspect of our existence which suddenly became prominent to my mind.

Specifically, as I reflected over the tears, there was a mood and tone of deep sadness and confusion. I was feeling tapped into some sense of collective suffering pertaining to the ways in which people may (collectively and individually) feel lost, alone, and helpless, like they’re stumbling around bumping into things in the dark and unable to understand why. I got a sense of all the pain caused from people doing things that they don’t really want to be doing, and not doing the things that they would like. All of this then cycles back into the sense of despair, despondency, and hopelessness as the feeling of futility sweeps over and mixes with a confusion about how to make a change and how to “get out of the rut.”

Upon reflection, I’m also aware enough to realize that there ARE personal dimensions to these feelings that exist, but the tears were not in response to any particular personal dilemma being faced at the time. Still, in a broad manner of seeing things, I can see ways in which even I feel those pangs of suffering by the ways in which I can sometimes feel “held back” from my dreams and desires, and the sense of “purposeless obligations” that seem so frustrating. However, I am also able to see and know (in faith) from a more expansive viewpoint that everything happens for some reason (cause/effect) and that everything unfolds and blooms according to a divine sense of order and timing. Ultimately, none of us are alone, and we all intrinsically have everything we need, being held within God/Source. There’s a sense of surrender that also comes to mind as we must get out of our own way and allow this unfolding to move us forward unimpeded by the variety of ways (consciously and less consciously…) that we often block, thwart, and hinder ourselves.

While I am able to bring myself out of the “illusionary trance of despair” through my connection to, and understanding of, Source/God, I also realize that there are many people struggling much more with the spiritual/existential dimension of their life and trying to make sense of what all is going on in the world, why things are the way they are, and how they can meaningfully find their place in the grand scheme of things in accordance with how they desire their individual life to unfold. Many people are angry, scared, frustrated, depressed, and a variety of other “emotional plagues” that are keeping them chained to a repetitive way of being that serves neither themselves nor the whole. In short, it’s the collective sense of “enslavement” that weighs us down while the idea of “liberation” always seems to dangle somewhere in the future. This “collective emotional residue” was the meat of what brought me to tears today.

Tracing the cause further, I was also able to pinpoint that it somehow seemed to generate after seeing a news story that came on while my mom was watching TV this morning while I got ready for work. There was an incident where a public bus driver fell asleep at the wheel and ending up crashing and plowing through a barrage of other cars. Seeing and hearing about this seemed to be what triggered my reflection, opening the floodgate to my rather irrational-seeming tears. Now, I don’t know the specifics about this event, or anything about the bus driver, so I can’t say that what I “got” from it was “real,” but the occurrence catalyzed a metaphoric concept and value that struck a chord in me quite clearly. How many people are “asleep at the wheel” of their life, with their foot on the gas pedal, plowing towards a disaster that they will truly not enjoy? How many people find it hard to “hit the brakes” on (or even take a break from…) the swarm of demands and routines that they’ve been conditioned and programmed into? So much has been indoctrinated in us about how we have to behave and act in order to get ahead in life to reach the “carrot on the end of the stick.”

The existential pain and suffering I’m describing is rampant in many throughout our consensus world it seems, but it also feels like it expresses differently among different groups. One such discrepancy I speculated is between the young and the old; this compartmentalization is also a huge generalization, and as such, it should be thought of in more archetypal terms than as a “matter of fact.” As such, for many reasons, the pain in the older generation was what hit me hardest today. (I’ll definitely address the younger crowd too, but my concern with them is more hopeful in the sense that they have more time to ameliorate their errors when compared to the sense of futility I feel from, and about, the older crowd’s predicament “at the end of their rope”...) The older people get, in general, the more set in their ways they become. It’s harder to make changes, and they often fall into routines and habits in life that are increasingly harder to break. With all the exponentially progressive changes occurring around the world, we are being opened up to “higher” levels of seeing and experiencing things that are requiring us to make “leaps of faith” and embrace totally new and alien ways of being, operating, and approaching our life. It can be scary for anyone, but especially the older crowd.

The archetype of Saturn stands in for that group also, and it’s easy to see the parallels between how, in Saturnian fashion, the elderly may feel “locked in” to whatever their sense of what’s “normal” has become, and to deviate from that calls up all sorts of fears, insecurities, and really leads to a sense of stagnation and paralysis in their life, preventing them from adequately moving forward into the future. They remain in the same old jobs they’re used to (but don’t necessarily enjoy), they continue their same style of eating (despite the new discoveries in the field of health and nutrition), and they perpetuate their own unsatisfactory relationship patterns (because that’s the way things are “supposed” or “expected” to be done.) Anything that differs from what they’re used to feels threatening and is met with a wall of (conscious or less conscious) resistance. As such, they more or less apathetically trudge on in their same familiar direction. In some cases, their resistance to change, and adherence to the past way of working, is upheld until a tragedy of some sort manifests to be the “wake-up call.” However, it should be safe to assert that no one truly desires a “car crash” to occur to make them take a closer look at the situations they’re involving themselves in…

On the other end of the spectrum, we have the younger crowd. They also feel the same sense of pain, suffering, and alienation when they reflect on their place in the world. However, they tend towards a different response. As they seem to become increasingly apathetic about the discord that surrounds, they demonstrate self-destructive and rebellious tendencies in reaction against any and all types of perceived authority. With an older generation holding onto, and preaching, their way of “how the world works,” the younger crowd feels a sense of futility about ever fitting into such a “misaligned” world and finding any true place and purpose. So many observations lead them to believe that the world has nothing for them, and they begin to rebel against the world (and life in general to the extreme) by acting out in explosive or implosive ways. The school environment and our prescribed approach for how to become a “grown-up” is part of their discomfort. When all life seems to be an assembly line of remembering this fact and that fact so one can move forward and take more classes that will simply provide more facts to be remembered and regurgitated, one begins to question the point of it all. I’m not trying to say that education is irrelevant, but it seems as though the way it’s being modeled and dispersed is increasingly beginning to feel that way to a lot of younger people…

So we have a collective whole that feels pained by the existing mold which life has seemingly locked them into, and everyone is trying to “get out.” Some, like the young, explosively rebel and can cause extreme disruptions on purpose as a result. Others, like my perspective of the bus driver, and the older crowd in general perhaps, consign to continuing with their dead-end path (or job, relationship, religion, etc…), without questioning the “why?” of it all, until a grand finale of sorts occurs when the rigidity of their approach causes something to eventually “break” in an unavoidable manner. In either case, I’m filled with a sense of sadness when I feel/see them all metaphorically as mere “babies” that have been blindfolded, left to crawl around in the dark, deprived of sustenance. This all ties into how much information and proper “nourishment” HAS been made “secret behind the veil” for so long, causing so much suffering and pain for the sake of some group maintaining their sense of superiority over others. It seems to boil down to some idea of “keeping power by keeping others down.” Well, like a Nine Inch Nails song goes, “I used to be above it, and now I’m down in it!” We ARE all in this together, and more and more , we are waking up to realize that we are all now “down in it” together…

While I’m not truly worried about any of it (I see it all unfolding and healing “right on time” in perfect ways), I also see a tendency in the youth that must be adjusted for their energy to “make a dent” in what is going on. Rebelling for the sake of rebelling will not cause meaningful change. To the contrary, it only serves to stunt and stagnate their own growth further. It is just another, perhaps cleverly disguised, self-destructive act. In arrogant rebellion, the youth shirk certain responsibilities, neglect concentrating on any task they deem irrelevant, and this starts them down a path where they are unable to build anything of value. Since they don’t value what they see and the way authorities have prescribed going about things, they have more or less decided, in their arrogant apathy, to not go about ANYTHING. The faultiness of this is that such behavior is exactly what will end with them lacking the skills, attention to details, work ethic, and industrious attitude that IS necessary to go about doing ANY tasks efficiently, regardless of whether or not they have decided that the specific tasks at hand are not meaningful enough to them to be attempted. It’s sad that our system, as it is, does seem to deny the youth meaningful outlets to practice such skills in ways they do find relevant, but until a turning point is reached, it is by doing the tasks that simply “must be done” (despite how connected or not one feels to them) that they will learn the foundational skills that WILL help them to do the tasks that will be a part of the way of living they do truly aspire to create.

So we’ve got two basic attitudes that can be reflected in the (archetypal) “young” and “old.” The old way is holding on to something that is losing, or has lost, its value, and (in some cases) they are unwilling to let go of it, even allowing their fixed grip (or stranglehold ) to cause them undue pain and suffering by continuing forward against the grains of change. Fear of the new seems to be behind this decision. On the other hand, the new way is still quite unformed, erratic, and sporadic about taking action. They are angry, in a sense, at the perceived oppression being wielded by the older way in attempt to control and contain them, and through their perspective of these older ways being too restrictive and limiting, they rebel. As such, they are unwilling to take a hold of ANYTHING. They seem to refuse to accept responsibility of any sort, not wanting to make any efforts whatsoever within a system they feel is unjust. What we have is ultimately the archetypal difference between the nature of Saturn and Uranus. (It’s curious to note that we are still going through the intensity of the Uranus square Pluto (which is in Saturn’s home sign of Capricorn) aspect, and this theme is implied in that energy signature as well.

When I attempted to discuss my emotional dilemma this morning, my own “personal Capricorn” also responded (quite like one would expect from a “Saturn spokesperson”) to my existential ordeal with some solid, cold, hard facts, that while seeming rather harsh, made some quite valid points. When I described the plight of people doing things they don’t want to do, and living these lives they don’t truly desire, his response was: “Nobody does anything that they don’t want to.” Period. Fundamentally, I have to agree. Even when we feel like the choices we make aren’t getting us where we want to be, we are still ultimately the ones making those choices. We DO get up and keep going in to that job we don’t like, or eating the wrong things and watching our health fail, or living in a way that isn’t in accordance with who we truly feel we are…and we do it all because we feel like we’re “supposed” to or we “should.” He was able to concede that while we don’t do anything we don’t want to, we do often find that we’re not getting what we wanted, although the RESPONSIBILITY for changing those things by making different choices is also in our hands, and then the picture begins to show the ways in which we’re simply NOT acting to help ourselves out of our own self-created mess…

Regardless of this very practical point of view, my emotional body still felt compelled to outpour compassion for the collective of people that seem to be drowning amidst some sort of undesirable situation with no clear understanding for how to swim out of it, even if they ARE truly the ones keeping themselves down there. Why is that? Well, to a large degree, I also realize that an aggravating factor seems to be too much “wrong conditioning” from the past that has caused us to collectively build up such faulty ways of approaching our lives. It may have been right at a time, and these old methods of achieving happiness and “success” must have had their place, but now they’ve become stuck in a way where they are hurting us by keeping us from fluidly moving into what’s becoming through an overly concrete adherence to what we’ve been taught about how things are. Now, as was explained with how the youth is arrogantly refusing to concentrate on anything, we don’t need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Still, a harmony needs to emerge so that we can begin to shift things into a new way of being that will serve everyone as individuals as well as our collective as a whole.

Initially, and in light of my own emotionally sensitive response, the Saturn side of things seemed so unforgiving (which it can be, as the actual nature of physical reality DOES adhere to certain laws that simply must be observed with respect). However, the gushiness of my own response’s sentimentality could also become a gateway to further enable others to continue their suffering through too much empathy with the feelings of futility and hopelessness. This dance also has a few, clear archetypal relationships. One is the fundamental different between the nature of the planets Jupiter and Saturn. Another is the difference indicated by the polarity between Pisces (ruled by Jupiter in part) and Virgo, or Cancer and Capricorn (ruled by Saturn). The other is the difference between the pillar of severity (also home to Saturn’s expression) and the pillar of mercy (where Jupiter’s expression is situated) on the Qabalistic tree of life diagram. In a general way, one could also see it as the difference between an earthy (solid, matter of fact, cause and effect) and watery (fluid, subjective, interconnected) approach to things. (Scorpio and Taurus seem rather excluded from these matters though…For the most part, Taurus keeps to its own business [although it also experiences the earthy resistance to change] and Scorpio isn’t that emotional gushy [although it is willing to transform and change, but only when deeply motivated, and definitely understanding of the difficult, intense work required.)

If one were to “talk” to Virgo, Capricorn, or Saturn, they would most likely hear the cold, critical perspective I heard about people doing what they want, only having themselves to blame for their situation, and declaring that people will only learn after they “fall on their face” and have to pick themselves back up from the bottom. There IS truth in this. However, if one talks with Jupiter, Pisces, and Cancer, they’d probably hear a lot about people doing their best, the universe being forgiving, helping others out, and caring for others with loving support. There is also truth in this--of another kind (which doesn’t exactly meet earthier standards) perhaps, but it is still there. The differing perspectives can also be returned to the core ideas (via the tree of life) of severity and mercy. Saturn, and the material world, can be quite severe in its dealings, without regard to who someone is, what their difficulties may be, etc. However, Jupiter, and the spiritual dimension, is also equally merciful through its understanding of the collectivity of nature and the manner in which we are all connected and included together in the ever-evolving discovery and expansion of life. The severity implies exactness, strict discipline and consequences, the physical(outer) side (form/behavior) of things, and the qualities of being cold and hard. Mercy complements this with the qualities of looseness, yielding compassion and forgiveness, the spiritual (inner) side (energy/intention) of things, and the qualities of being warm and soft. These two dimensions are not truly in opposition; they intertwine in a complementary fashion. Both truths are simultaneously existent, although the extent of their activation (or lack thereof) is quite dependent on the choices we make.

If you don’t put it out there, you don’t see it reflect back. If it’s not given, then it’s not received. One who doesn’t offer others compassion and mercy tends not to experience it extended unto them. (If you can’t empathize with someone’s suffering, you probably also find yourself suffering devoid of support.) Likewise, one who doesn’t go about things in a precise, exact, or severe manner tends to reap results that are lacking in evidence of those traits. (If you don’t concentrate and focus on the precision of what you do, your products are probably sloppy and problematic.) It should now be evident how both of these approaches must be utilized for success. As a generalization, the older way seems too severe, lacking the compassionate mercy to empathize and connect with the emotional nature of the pain being perpetuated. To contrast, the younger way seems too mercifully forgiving about none of the issues being “their fault,” lacking the severe accountability regarding the ways in which their actions do play a part in their scenario. Each end of the spectrum must learn to hold hands with the others in order to help pull them out of their own particular form of suffering.

In reflection, it would seem as though this full moon has precipitated my emotional fullness to “pop,” and with its (and my individually natal) Virgo articulation, I have set about analyzing the currents behind the scenes of the existentially emotional distress. (Curiously, this full moon now also is in opposition to both the Sun and Chiron [the wounded healer…] in Pisces, complementing the analysis with the radiance of emotional compassion for the suffering undergone.) I am grateful that I am able to “see behind the veil” enough to realize the way in which the spiritual “machinery” of the universe generally seems to operate. This has allowed me to pull my own self out of unwarranted suffering on many accounts, seeking to continually restore harmony to whatever dimension of the truth has been left obscured or forgotten and is in need of restoration. Still, my heart goes out to the collective of which we are all a part, as I also realize we can, as a whole, rise no further than the lowest rung is raised. As such, we each must do our part to help elevate those around us, even if by no other means than our empathy and compassion….merged of course with some practical assistance and instruction geared to rehabilitate actions and behavior ;)

As I unwind, I’d also like to point out that I often feel as though the act of crying IS healing on some level. Crying, as the release of fluid, reflects our own fluid softness, metaphorically released as the icy hardness held within begins to thaw and melt. While crying certainly isn’t necessary for healing to take place, it does seem to coincide with an energetic signature of pain and suffering leaving us, cathartically freeing room and space within to be filled with love. (My favorite band, Tool, has even alluded to the power behind tears with their talk of “lachrymology,” as the study of crying. For anyone interested in further exploring their rendition of this rabbit hole, an article that focuses on the topic can be found at http://www.toolarmy.com/toolband/lachrymology/lachrymology.php?key=fob .)

In closing, I’d like to offer up the prayer and intent that we may all find our way to the healing we need, understanding along the way that there is no shame in crying and deeply feelings emotions. By sharing my story and experience, and in a sense “healing on a stage,” out in the open, vulnerably exposed without a shell for all to see (or read rather…), I would hope that we can all open up a little more in whatever way we need so that we can all “move on together.” In the meantime, as our world continues to transition, “I’m still right here, giving blood, keeping faith, and I’m still right here…gonna wait it out…” as peacefully poised and patient as possible ;)