“Some people just aren’t ready to hear the truth”
I remember my attorney telling me about a client. He kept advising the client to take the defendant’s settlement offer. “It was a fair offer,” he recounted. “It might not have been ideal, but it was the best I was going to be able to get for this guy. I’m an expert. I know how these things are going to shake out.”
But the client was convinced he could do better and he pushed my attorney to take his case to trial. “He was looking to hit the jackpot,” said my attorney, shaking his head slowly.
“What happened?” I asked.
“He lost all the money I’d negotiated for him. By the time the case was over and everybody got paid, he made about one-tenth of what I would have gotten him,” my attorney said sadly. “Some people just aren’t ready to hear the truth.”
We had a good laugh over that line. Over the years my attorney, who is a very astute man, had given me some very good advice that I hadn’t been able to hear.
I feel like that’s one of the big Saturn lessons I might finally be learning, here at age 41 and well into my second Saturn cycle. Maybe it’s all the PR work I’ve been doing on behalf of His Grumpiness. “The gods like to be remembered,” says James Hillman of the archetypes inside the soul. Or, in Carl Jung’s words, “[C]onstant observation pays the unconscious a tribute that more or less guarantees its cooperation.”
Or maybe it’s just that I’m getting older – Saturn lessons tend to make a little more sense as we get older.
I noticed this phenomenon last night. I’m taking class and the teacher made a few suggestions to the class that fell outside of my comfort zone. My immediate reaction was to dismiss them from my conscious awareness. If I had verbalized my feelings, I would have said something like, “That’s great. But I’m not doing that.”
The difference this time is that I saw myself dismissing the suggestions and I recognized almost instantaneously that (a) I was paying the teacher a lot of money to help me change and grow and (b) therefore, wouldn’t it make sense to listen to everything she had to say, not just the material that feels comfy to me?
A similar thing happened the other night. Jenny pulled me aside and said, “There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about. I’ve been putting it off because I didn’t want to have to tell you.”
Well, with that beginning, you can imagine the fear thoughts that went flying through my head. she’s leaving me, can’t handle this baby thing anymore. She’s got cancer, AIDS, since she had the baby she can’t stand the way I smell and she’s taken a vow of celibacy.
You know how those crazy thoughts start flying around.
I would have to say my default fear-based reaction — based on many years of unpleasant conversations and aggressive, manipulating behavior in relationships, at work, in the family, etc. — would be to assume a defensive stance. To armor myself against the impending blow. To tighten up, close up, go into fight or flight mode.
You know how the rest of the story usually goes once you assume that defensive-offensive position.
But I surprised myself. I heard this voice saying, “You can handle this. Breathe.” So I breathed, a couple good deep breaths. “OK,” I said. “I’m a little scared now. But I’m ready.”
Turns out it was about the bills. Not maybe the best news I’ve ever gotten, but I knew we had bills to pay. Who doesn’t these days?
With the challenging class material, I found myself executing a similar movement. The best way I can describe it is that rather than hardening up and pushing the new information away, I found that I could open up and contain it in my field. That doesn’t mean I have to like it, at least not right away. Who knows, maybe those suggestions are things I will never do. But one of them could turn out to be very helpful to me, and by not instantly dismissing my teacher’s hard-earned wisdom, at least now I’ll get the chance to find out.
Saturn is the voice of authority and hard-won worldly wisdom. It’s interesting to notice (a) just how ingrained is my emotional response to instantly shut down and dissociate when confronted with a suggestion that I change my behavior in ways I hadn’t anticipated; and (b) that I can create enough space in my field to allow that wisdom to remain there, accessible, in case I do decide that changing is my best option.
6 Comments
D.K.
Your creating enough space in your field to allow has rippled throughout the universe. Those keen on that vibration are celebrating you. One could say wisdom is becoming bigger than anything life throws at us. Just think of the impact of many ‘wisdoms’ who suddenly realize they’re connected!
Thanks, Alexx. What might we do next?
Anybody else out there opened up some space in the field with the help of the Outer-Planetary Pressure Cooker?
Yes, the space is opening…though it doesn’t feel much easier, which is an observation, not a real complaint. Instead of unreleasable depths of anger, the anger is moving through and away and out and exposing even deeper wells of love and tenderness….with that comes fear…so now to sit with the love and tenderness and let the fear move through…
Theres a song I heard the other day that has really been sitting with me. I suppose it was originally written as a love song from a man to his girl, but I keep hearing it as a love song from the lights in the universe who are speaking up and throwing stones into the energetic ocean to the other lights who are waking up more and more with each ripple on our shore and it reminds me of the conversations posted here about the Karmic Quickening…I’ll post the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfbzkp3dVB4
Wow Morganna (just really wanted to call you that tonight), thank you so much for the heartfelt and honest observations. And the link – what an amazing performance. A lot of space in that song, I totally saw what you describe. And these are tough times. But also times of amazing opportunity. As Dr. Gilligan would say at Trance Camp: “And isn’t it amazing to know that you can enjoy both….at the same time!.”
I feel like I’m living three lives or more simultaneously. One part of me will be totally exhausted, on the verge of tears, feeling like a failure. While another part is exultant at how fast I’m growing and how many awesome, integral people are in my orbit, or I in theirs. And yet another part just calmly sits and watches the circus, laughing without movement, loving all of us beyond what words I have power to speak.
Thanks for sharing your experience in such a heart-felt way. I enjoy your horoscopes every week and hope you know how right on your intuitions are.
I have seven planets in Virgo, so have had quite the few years of cycling through the old stuff as Saturn went through Virgo, and I suppose, touched on each of those planets in their own way. I feel the relief as he moves on, and also feel the gratitude for lessons that were tough but sooooooooo valuable. The space that has opened up for me can be summed up by what my partner calls “looking for the missing ducks.” (We’ve been working through all this old stuff together, and *helpfully* point out where the other one can continue to release.)
We saw a duck and her four lovely ducklings in the park a few weeks ago and really enjoyed the experience. A few days later, I went back, and there was only one duckling. I was horrified, imagining the evil creatures that took those three helpless ducklings, and went home to express the unfairness of the universe, yadda yadda. My partner said, “you’re always looking for the missing ducks. You probably didn’t even notice that the mother was sitting there, enjoying her little duckling, not grieving for the lost ones.” I had to admit (graciously, of course) that he might be right, and that she had in fact been sitting in the sun with her little duckling beside her, looking quite content. Saturn was asking me to release the need to go to the possible (often horrible) outcomes and allow for things to just be okay as they are. Even better, allowing for them to be beautiful as they are. Being conscious of what actually IS has opened my eyes to new potential outcomes.
Wow, Jenny. What a powerful metaphor. Thanks so much for sharing. You shouldn’t beat yourself up too much — with 7 planets in Virgo you might have a natal tendency to see all the apparent randomness of the universe with a critical eye (wink). But that is such a wonderful expression. And how fortunate both of you are to have each other to work with! May this retrograde help you take all those Saturn lessons and organize them into a nice, tight stack of mental file cards that will serve to guide you away from old bad patterns and into more and more joyful freedom in the years to come.