If we really believe we are all one, then Free Will becomes a very complicated concept that cannot be understood independently of other complicated concepts.
As Mars reaches the 7th stage of partnership with Pluto, following the 6th of apprenticeship, I am thinking about Free Will.
Free Will
makes me think of a story my son told me about his job as a mechanic. He was sitting around with a work mate one
day, shooting the breeze while the boss was out of town. There was no pressure to generate billable
hours, and neither of them was on fire to complete a project on one of their
own cars. They really didn’t have to be
at work, they just liked being in the shop while the boss was out of town. The slightly older but very experienced
mechanic with a deep affection for cars, especially old ones, said, “I’ve got
an idea! Let’s get a bicycle tube.” They located an old tube lying around the
shop. They don’t just work on cars there;
the boss is a very creative guy and encourages the few workers to bring in any
project that requires welding or shop tools.
He likes to tell people that they are more than just a mechanic shop,
and this is evident by the works in progress sitting in the parking lot and work bays. One example is a hand built bike standing near the front bay that was built by a third worker, also out of town the day this little adventure took place. The contraption is spray painted silver and does not appear to be ride able, but my son assures me they have ridden it to the railroad tracks.
Well they cut the tube and clamped it on the tail pipe of the slightly older mechanic’s old Saab. My son describes it as looking like a professor’s car. What is that? Modest but respectable? Any way I don’t remember if they tied the dangling end of the tube to make it harder for exhaust to escape or not. I’m sure some folks reading this will be familiar with the gag. They were ready to go to lunch! When they stopped at a light in front of the local patio café, the new hip place up the hill from the railroad tracks, they gave the idling engine a bit of extra gas to let that tube waving from the tail pipe do its thing.
I enjoy a
hearty laugh when my son tells these stories.
Then, like a good wet blanket, I say, “couldn’t you get in trouble with
the cops for that?” But I am imagining
that tube flailing around and the sound it must make. My son gave a hilarious rendition of the
fluttering putt putts, but I don’t trust him.
When he mimics people he uses the same voice for all women and can be
sloppy with his accents.
That to me
is free will. No, I’m not thinking of the
mechanics’ public display for amusement, but the sputtering tube waving from
the tail pipe. When we get puffed up
about something and feel it must be done and we do it by God we do it! We are exercising free will, just like that
tube connected to the exhaust pipe. As
long as we pretend we are not connected to each other, to the planets in
heaven, as long as we pretend that we are individuals in control of our own
lives we can say we are exercising our very own personal free will, or that a
person we’re observing is exercising theirs.
We can even
look at someone whose tail pipe is not idling very high and wonder why they don’t
use their will. “Use the will GOD gave
you!” Like the characters in Tolstoy
novels that beat their horses in a rush to abduct some sweet young, red cheeked
girl they just have to have from the latest formal ball. The gambler beats the horses and flies to
meet his buddies and the horses exercise their will and I probably am rewriting
Tolstoy but this is not about him. Or
maybe it is. Free Will.
Free will is
blind. It is nothing but a bicycle tube
stiff with exhaust trying to escape from a tail pipe. Self control, imagination, memory,
intellectual processing of perceptions are different words. If we really believe the universe is one and
we’re not just parroting words that we’ve heard repeated in uplifting songs
sung among people that agree with us (or at least pretend to) while we are in
church on Sunday or practicing meditation on Wednesday, if we really believe we
are in fact and deed all one, then free will becomes a very complicated concept
that cannot be understood independently of other equally complicated concepts.
We follow
the planets that were here since like forever (you know, like a California TV
character with her gum smacking and her painted toenails would say it,
“Like-for Evverr.”) We have had electric
light for like not forever. We have had controlled
fire for like not forever. But we have
had the Moon and Mars for like 4 evverrs.…….
When I think
of blind will I am reminded of the medical hero who said “geez this opium
is really addictive, let’s just inject it directly into the veins so it can
kill the pain at the source.” Not. Or the following generation of scientists who said if we can just isolate the parts of the molecule that kill the pain
maybe it won’t be so addictive. So now
people crave pills instead of laudanum in an elixir or opium smoked from a pipe.
A careful
astrologer follows Mars to understand will, with no pretensions to mastering
anything. She only hopes to see how the
story of Free Will looks, when blindly played out in our individual lives
against the unfolding heaven that surrounds us.
And though an astrologer may focus for moments or days at a time on Mars
and its relationship to her and her Earthly comrades, she always has the other
planets in the back of her mind; Venus and Kindness, Saturn and Self Discipline, Mercury and Perception, Jupiter and Imagination.
Our bodies
are like bicycle tubes attached to invisible exhaust pipes. Some people get tubes shaped like a peace
symbol and the air goes round and round in circles escaping through a bunch of
tiny outlets and we see a nice rhythmic pulsing of peaceful smiles. Some people get other kinds of bodies. The tubes might be formulated with a
different combination of chemicals, resulting in funky forms that stretch or
pop, or blow up into frightening shapes.
If we really believe the unity myth, like one god, and all humans
created in that one god’s likeness, then there must be some function for each
one of those tubes wagging from the air of some invisible exhaust pipe. And what about the invisible engine expelling
air through the invisible pipe? In other
words where is Mars when each person starts breathing in that universal
exhaust? The goal of astrology is to
sort that out according to where and when we take our first breaths.
In order to know whether there is a connection between what’s happening with our will and the lesser malefic known as Mars we have to actually follow Mars…. In that way we live with knowledge of
what is happening in the sky that holds us, or as Plato said (transliterated
from the Greek letters) Con Sciencia.
To live
consciously in this sense means knowing where
Mars was when we were born and where it was when we lost it or when we
couldn’t stand a situation anymore and took action to change it; where it was
when an event came up in our life that forced us to take action that we really
wanted to avoid. To gain a universal understanding of will we study Mars, among the other planets,
in the map of heaven for the moment of birth and in maps for moments of
crisis. Each person decides for herself if she can perceive a connection between Mars and the uncontrollable urge, subtle or crude
as it may be, to make something happen.
