The Obvious Everywhere

We have only a couple of months remaining to extract the lessons of an exalted Rahu in the sign of Gemini! On September 23, Rahu will move backwards into Taurus for the next 1.5 years (the lunar nodes always move in retrograde motion) which is actually another of his signs of exaltation. In Gemini Rahu is exalted for wealth, in Taurus he is exalted for health. Taurus is a sign of nourishment, being symbolized by a pasture and the bull which is associated with milk, Moon gets its exaltation in Taurus because it is the planet of food and nourishment, specifically indicating milk and milk products. Rahu’s time in Taurus will be a good time to prioritize the body’s health and that type of nourishment which we might associate with going home to mom’s kitchen—where we can achieve fullness not only physically but also psychologically and emotionally.

Until then: Rahu continues to whip up a storm in Gemini through an almost unimaginable amount of misinformation and general confusion around communication. But a sub-task of Rahu in Gemini is also to increase addiction and anything that causes numbing. Rahu can act like a stone, absolutely unaffected by any kind of emotional appeal to the point of being almost inert. Rahu in Gemini wants to numb us through the many temptations of larger cities (represented by Gemini) such as bars, gambling, many forms of entertainment and addictions. Rahu is probably doing pretty well on this task at the moment, since due to quarantine many people are self-medicating in various ways.

It is worth investigating why we might retreat to the numbness that Rahu offers: remember he is the head of the cosmic serpent; he is severed from his body and can therefore experience no satiation. His appetite is cerebral and circular: he keeps us running in loops of craving that can never actually be fulfilled. Sounds like fun, right? But the point of the running is to avoid something. Rahu’s other half is Ketu: the body, which is what Rahu’s actions are meant to in some way avoid. The body is the home of the subtle intelligence and feeling capacity that makes us human. Without the map provided by feeling and sensation we can become so completely lost that the temptations of Rahu to remain in the mind can become very convincing. This is dangerous territory, since it is one thing to know you’re off balance and determine to get back on track but an entirely different ball game to be off balance and think it is good for you.

And I would say we are treading into that dangerous disembodied territory, if not already fully immersed in it. The cumulative effect of so much Rahu i.e. so much forgetting and dissociation from self and reality is that it is difficult to see how severe the problem really is. The illusion is so thick that we do not see the extent of the disturbance. And at this point it might be suicide to suddenly feel the devastation of the present historical moment through the lens of a culturally intact ancestor, for example. The blow is softened by the fact that we don’t even realize how much has been lost: culturally, spiritually, morally, and even in terms of overall vitality and ability to contribute to Life.

This Rahu energy has been building for generations, as the building of more and more big cities strengthens the sign of Gemini, the planet which is exalted there-Rahu-is also strengthened. It is not just the accumulated numbness of our own lifetime and generation we are dealing with, but a backlog of numbing handed down to us by traumatized generations preceding us (Rahu also is the indicator of trauma). It all ends in devastation if we are not able to touch the unconsciousness of Rahu with the consciousness of Ketu, or the body (Ketu) with the mind (Rahu).

In short, what I’m suggesting is that the avoidance techniques we might be employing right now go beyond our wanting to avoid ourselves. Because the entire world is in turmoil and we are (for the most part) collectively attempting to avoid the elephant in the room which is: the systems we have in place, our collective foundations are dysfunctional and unsustainable and we cannot with any conscience go on like this—whatever your routine around avoidance might be may also be an attempt to avoid a gigantic backlog of undigested emotion and experience which is the cultural lacunae we are all suffering under. Rahu represents the obvious obstacle that no one can actually see—he shows that type of confusion, where the problem is everywhere but you have adapted to it so don’t necessarily notice it.

Navigating the confusion, numbness and forgetting invoked by Rahu is an incredibly delicate task, as anyone who works with trauma knows. As I said, the next couple of months give us an opportunity to attempt to work consciously with this energy before Rahu moves into Taurus, giving a different focus.

Admittedly, this is some of my least favorite territory. Rahu asks us to wade into our own density: the places where we feel nothing or feel only an unsavory weight and resistance, or a feeling of a ‘stuckness’ that will not abate. I am much more interested in subtlety of feeling and the intuition available in micro-sensations—this is Ketu’s territory. But in order to alchemically join Rahu and Ketu (which is the mythological task) we cannot ignore the dense, heavy, ‘gross’ sensations either. That would be the ‘spiritual bypassing’ which none of us can afford right now. Abiding with the sticky, heavy, numb places requires patience and commitment and is the true test of spiritual practices: where the rubber hits the road, so to speak.

Because there is so much stuck energy in this places of numbness and density, they are also incredible sources of the type of potential energy which can completely transform the landscape of life. There are pockets of this in wait everywhere, which gives me hope for the future of humanity. We can see it already waking up inside the Black Lives Matter movement, where what was hidden to the majority is being exposed and mobilizing a tremendous amount of latent energy.

What we are working with is the blind spots: personal and collective. We are inside one collectively, but we are all each also very likely navigating our own blind spots as well. This is such a critical part of the ‘waking up’ that it would be a mistake to pass it by without getting our hands dirty.

To work here, I recommend becoming a little bit suspicious of yourself—particularly the places where you are ‘certain.’ Imagine that you are navigating at night: in order to chart a successful course and avoid potential dangers you must move slowly and remain constantly alert to what’s going on in your periphery. Your vision is equally attuned to what you can and cannot see. There is an implicit assumption that you are somewhat blind in this type of environment. So translate that to your waking life and assume that you are just as blind.

Try not to stub any toes!