Scene 1:

A woman is walking through a park in a busy city. Suddenly a masked man runs up behind her and snatches her purse. She screams. A few bystanders look around startled, wondering if they should do something, but the thief quickly takes a dirt trail and disappears from sight.

A few moments later as the woman is in some combination of grief and rage, a man on a nearby park bench yells out to her, his mouth half full with a muffin he is eating: Don’t worry M’am. Everything happens for a reason!

Scene 2:

A man sluggishly stumbles outside to pick up the morning paper. Do people still read papers? In any case he stumbles outside in the early morning to pick something up. He wears only his robe and slippers.

Then he sees, Oh no, his car which is parked on the road has been badly dented and one mirror is missing. It was probably a drunk driver the previous night. Fuuuckkkk! he screams.

He is standing there, a ball of anger, with no place to put it before he catches sight of his young son, who is standing on the balcony above him. The kid waves and says Don’t worry Dada. Everything happens for a reason!

Scene 3:

It’s space central. The launch is about to happen. Everyone has been planning for months. A new shuttle, a new crew, the first ever manned flight to Pluto (yes Pluto).

The whole world watches their tvs, which are now implanted inside the eyeball, no handheld or large screen needed. Anyways the whole world watches as the broadcaster counts down from space central. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, liftoff!

The shuttle rises. The burn is magnificent. Cameras show angles of the crew as their bodies rock against the pressure. Then, only a moment later, the shuttle bursts into flame! Oh no. The mission crew on land is dismayed. The families of the flight crew can’t believe it.

The video of the flight suddenly cuts off and returns to the broadcaster, who holds his earpiece as he receives an update: I’m sorry everybody but this is just in from mission command: they’re saying “Everything happens for a reason.”

⚘⚘⚘⚘

Yes everything happens for a reason. But there is a time and place for such “sage wisdom”. Although it “couldn’t have gone any other way,” it’s still okay to be upset or pissed off.

It’s even okay if the upsetting events happened years ago…

Of course there is also a place for letting go and moving on, but doing so requires feeling the feelings, discussing them or airing them out. Often what we might consider sage wisdom is little more than a cork in our emotional bottles.

Are we saying it happened for a reason because we earned the right to say that–because we really feel it with gratitude in our bones? Or are we saying it to convince ourselves? Saying it as a daily cork replacement for our bottle that is ready to burst at any moment?

Just food for thought…

This kind of thing would be known as “spiritual bypassing”. It is very common. I notice it even in my spiritual community, which I consider to be a pretty mature community. I probably do this myself a lot!

But I think a sign of a mature community (spiritual or otherwise) is the ability to be with negativity, upsettedness, without trying to dismiss it. Just listening or witnessing.

We are so quick to dismiss I guess because that’s what we’ve been taught or what we’ve had to do, but I think the time has come where we can own or accept all of what we’ve got going on, pleasant and unpleasant.

As I said before, the ironic thing is that when we try to dismiss, it never goes away. It may even grow or fester. While if we just let it be, let it be out in the open, then it’s likely to pass–like a storm that comes and goes.

But importantly we’re not airing out what we air out to force it to pass. We’re just being open and honest with whatever is present. Spiritual development requires emotional development and going into the trenches to find buried emotions that despite being hidden, manage to govern our lives.

And spiritual development is helped if there are other people who can let us share these buried emotions without judgment or dismissal.

On a related note: beware of any spiritual teachers or purported spiritual teachers who fake positivity–who, if you or anyone shares a strong negative emotion, they are quick to dismiss it, if they are completely unreceptive to it. In some cases people do this just out of habit, in which case it is what it is. But for any people who are providing guidance to others or who are making themselves out to be some kind of “ascended” individual, they should have greater responsibility.

And many of these kinds of people are manipulators plain and simple…

Ascension and descension go hand-in-hand. You can’t seek one without the other (or you can, it just won’t turn out well…).

Personally I don’t like the term ascension at all. Whenever I hear it I am immediately suspect. And personally I don’t really think that should be our goal or aim. We’re on earth. How about we try to be a part of the earth? Where do you expect this “ascension” to take you?

To me it seems like our capitalist obsessions with climbing ladders, success, and achievement mapped onto the spiritual domain. It’s out-of-harmony with ourselves and with life.

Being an astrologer, I also see this as remnants of Age of Pisces spirituality, which emphasized spirit as being separate from the body. With Age of Aquarius spirituality, I think it’s more about community and practicality as spiritual ideals. But then again, many people despite this being the Age of Pisces have never lost touch with earth-honoring traditions… so who knows.

In any case, I know that today it’s important to get more in touch with our bodies and our emotions–even the unpleasant ones. There is no path to success, however you might define success, or happiness, however you might feel happy, that does not involve those! So let’s do better! Let’s visit those places we haven’t before.

Let’s be open and realize that even though, yes, everything happened for a reason, it still makes me angry!

(Happy Aries season 🔥)