Responsibility, Jyotish, and Transforming Karma
Jyotish means, “light” and the practice of Jyotish is shining a light on what is hidden. Revealing the puppeteer’s play of strings tugging at our emotions and psychology makes us realize that the planets are hard at work spinning their webs of illusion. In reality, there may not be anything there but a game of “smoke and mirrors.” When we recognize these “shadow” patterns, we have the opportunity to take responsibility and create positive shifts in our lives by taking directed action when we use this newfound awareness.
Thoughts that are erratic or blocked by self-doubt are often the root cause of our problems. People think that mantras and Vedic ceremonies are magic bullets but that is not totally the case. Mantras and ceremonies are prescribed to loosen the grip of mind illusions so that we can then take new action without being manipulated, controlled, or feeling victimized.
Mantras and ceremonies should create good health, power of speech, and action to construct and empower new directions in our life so that we are empowered. Sometimes clients would like a magic bullet to lift the problems and sometimes that can happen with grace if you have a Sat Guru and are blessed. More often than not, the client has to actively make major changes in their life to recreate their life.
This is no easy task and requires huge willpower, motivation, and a strong ability to change. Without spiritual practice, service, and the company of spiritual people and surroundings, supporting this can be difficult to accomplish. Ideally, we have to own the responsibility for our own suffering and do something to change it.
For modern Western clients, I like to recommend donations that are specific for the karma involved. If we can do service work or donate to charities related to the problems in our life, we are re-addressing past karma very directly. Jupiter/Rahu afflictions, which may cause problems with luck in this life, may mean that you were not a good parent to your children in past lives or that you were not respectful of Gurus. Donating to support children or teachers and doing volunteer work for agencies like scouting and Big Brother/Little Sister on a Thursday, ruled by Jupiter, maybe a way of addressing that past karma.
Difficult transits can increase fear, anxiety, and regret depending on where they fall in the chart, which creates deep emotional psychological churnings that, may leave you feeling as if you cannot get a handle on it. Swimming in the sea of transits can feel like being in a Scorpion swamp. Do we run off to take shelter?
Most of the world will have a few drinks, take some drugs, smoke a pack of cigarettes, or eat themselves into a numbed-out stupor. That can work for a bit but it is destructive and takes you out of your deepest being. If you are on a spiritual path, what do you do? Those of us on a spiritual path have to go through these moments in time, acknowledge them and feel them deeply. The process of feeling them can facilitate their deep release.
What are we afraid of? Are we really those stupid feelings and emotions or something bigger? Go deep into them and the attention of your consciousness will facilitate their release.
We can always do a bit of spiritual or astrological bypassing and that can help too but remember you are so much bigger than your emotions. If a storm is happening, be like Billy Buddy in Herman Melville’s classic. Strap yourself to the mast and go through it! In the end, you will find that your eternal Self is so much bigger than a few waves and in fact, you are the waves and you are the ocean! How can you be afraid of the very water that you are made of? Stay strapped to the mast, whatever storms come, say, “I am here, and let them come through me.” How can we run away from a tiny emotion? What power can it really have over us? Don’t the storms make you a deeper and more powerful person? Embrace. Realize that you are unchanging, and nothing can touch you. You are invincible. Merge with the water and become One.
This is a time to be disciplined about your meditation and spiritual practices and yoga because these lighten the burden and give us more strength to deal with everything. The tendency is to skip that which is good for us.
So, if you are not able to do that you can always do the following:
1. Donate time and money to help those in need. This is one way to address karma and by getting out of our own stuff, we feel better and move through our own karma.
2. Be disciplined with diet and exercise. The tendency is to use food to cover up difficult emotions or skip exercise because we feel tired or lazy. So much illness (6th house) can be overcome if you are disciplined in doing what is good for you.
3. Avoid addictive behaviors and non-life-supporting actions, especially now. The tendency is to escape but usually, this leads to more difficult problems.
4. Spend time with spiritual knowledge, attend spiritual gatherings, and hang around positive people who uplift you.
5. Do transformational healing work to move through these energies.
The transits will pass. Embrace yourself, embrace the storm, embrace your emotion and just be!
