Yesterday’s article ”Using Astrology to Transcend Suffering and Make Your Life A Joy" offered an introduction to the way fate and free will intersect in astrology, and how our mental patterns lead us into actions, feelings, and thoughts which cause us to suffer. Today we discuss how to antidote the sources of suffering.

As I offered, there are four things in our mind which lead us to suffer: attachments, aversions, illusions and delusions, and the mind’s inherent pessimism. One or more of these “sources of suffering” are found in every difficult situation, every challenging relationship, and every personal crisis. Even if we aren’t generating them, we often find ourselves with others who are suffering because of one or more of these.

Astrology lets us know when challenging times are coming, the forces involved, and the highest possible responses, should we choose to act in those ways. We always have the power to choose wise responses when we most want to clutch, stick our heads in the sand, or fall prey to illusions and pessimism. However, by being self-aware and realizing we always have conscious choice in the moment, we can master the sources of suffering in ourselves, which enables us to know what to do when we find attachments, aversions, illusions, or pessimism creating problems for others.

Using Astrology To Transform Bad Karma to Good

Both “Big K” and “little k” karmas play a part in what shows up in our lives that challenge us not to fall into behaviors that generate suffering, and when possible antidote past karmic patterns which keep us suffering. Both types of karma are explored in my book Saturn: Spiritual Master, Spiritual Friend, and what I offer there is extremely useful in sorting out various types of challenges we deal with throughout life. Once we understand the sources of the problems, and know what to do, then negative karmic patterns can be turned to positive karmic opportunities in a very short time.

Astrology gives us a way to know when our karmic challenges will present themselves, giving us opportunities to generate and perpetuate good karmic patterns, as well as turn negative karmic patterns and responses to more productive ones. As I offered in yesterday’s article, the octile series aspects (semisquare, square, sesquisquare and opposition) indicate points of friction or tension in the “whole cycle.” These are periods in time when we are most challenged in some way symbolized by the planets in frictional contact.

These aspects tend to focus our attention so we can deal with the internal and/or external friction going on. These are the exact points in any cycle when we can override responses that will perpetuate suffering, replacing them with better, more productive responses.

After these points of friction and potential crisis, whether in the waxing (building) or waning (culminating) phases, we find ourselves in relatively productive, stabilizing, and even specializing phases in the “whole cycle.” These periods allow us to incorporate the better response into our hologram, creating more productive responses in the future.

”Big K” Karma and “little k” karma are always at work when we encounter difficulty. In the former, points of conflict and challenge help us to transcend our personal suffering and become the Light of the Sacred Wound, helping others to overcome their suffering. In “little k” karmas, those difficulties are products of prior causes of commission and omission, and offer us opportunities to change our responses to stop potential causes of future suffering. Again, these concepts are explored in greater depth in Saturn: Spiritual Master, Spiritual Friend.

That’s why the frictional aspects are the best times to shift negative to positive responses, and the favorable aspects are times to understand and practice productive views and responses, stabilizing them as habits in our consciousness. With enough practice, we will be able to greet all negative circumstances without falling into suffering or behaviors that are ineffective in dealing with suffering.

The Antidotes to the Sources of Suffering

So what are the antidotes to the 4 sources of human suffering residing in the brain-mind? If these are universal human problems, then there must be universal solutions we can apply whenever inner or outer friction leads us into confronting attachments, aversions, delusions and illusions, and the negativity of the mind. If we can remember to apply these antidotes when in the presence of attachments, aversions, illusions, and pessimism, then over time it becomes easier for us to default to the corrective behavior.

Because all of Life is One, as we master healthy responses in ourselves, then we can be the Light of “the corrective Force of Nature Herself” whenever we find ourselves in situations where others are in difficulty through any of the sources of suffering. As we learn, we pay it forward. As it has been famously stated, “more suffering is bad; less suffering is good.”

Because the sources of suffering are so ingrained in all of us, we have to be diligent and consistent in applying the antidotes until they become fixed response patterns. While it’s human to fall back into getting attached, or avoiding tough people and hard lessons, or getting lost in misunderstanding why things are as they are, as we apply the antidotes to negative circumstances as they arise, over time the tendency to fall back into unproductive behaviors will end.

Each time the tendency to fall back into getting attached, avoiding the problem, buying into illusions and delusions, or being pessimistic comes up, it’s the perfect time to examine what in our mind continues to go there. Is it the self-conscious mind, or the subconscious mind? As I told you, weeds are tough to exterminate, but they must be eliminated from “the garden of the flowering mind” if we are to realize our Divine potential.

Attachments Are Solved By Detachment

The obvious antidote for attachment is Detachment. Perhaps easier said than done, but once you form the habit it becomes a natural response. Even to detach from detachment teaches detachment, much like the reward of patience is more patience.

It is easy to see how various types of physical, emotional, and mental attachments lead to suffering. Attachment to perceptual traps leads to wars and conflicts, both internal and external. Through detachment we come out of clutching, wandering aimlessly through painful experiences, and learn how not to magnetize unfortunate experiences and people to us.

Over time, detachment helps us not fear that the good will end or the bad won’t. As all forms pass away down the timestream of Life, we learn not to clutch at things, people, and attitudes that no longer have any purpose in our lives. That allows us to enjoy the moment, and come out of fear.

Aversions Are Solved By Dispassion

The antidote for aversion is Dispassion, or indifference to the separate, fear-based ego-self and its opinions and perceptions. From time to time, we all fall into wanting to avoid seeing or admitting certain things. However, as we avoid facing certain things, we also fall prey to our aversion to the truth of those matters and often become victims of our own making. Most of us are invested in subjective points of view. This gives rise to a degree of suffering when those views change or are challenged.

Dispassion allows us to observe life without seeing only what we want to see. It doesn’t mean we will agree with all things – but it can result in a point of view where we are not attached to limited views, can see the transitoriness of much of what we and others believe. Dispassion helps us learn not to take things personally.

Dispassion and inner equilibrium are naturally linked, with equipoise the strength and refuge of dispassion. When taken to its outer limit, dispassion naturally becomes compassion, since in seeing things as they are, we can understand a greater common “feeling experience.”

A major benefit of dispassion is the longer we can view things from an eternal angle rather than a personality based angle is that a degree of detachment will naturally arise as well, as these two virtues tend to be mutually reinforcing. A dispassionate view is detached; a detached view is dispassionate, and allows compassion to enter into the mix.

Delusions and Illusions Are Solved by Divine Discernment

The antidote for delusions or illusions based in misunderstanding is Discrimination, or Divine Discernment. This is the ability to know the more valuable from the less valuable, the more relevant from the less relevant, “the real from the unreal.” With discrimination we examine the relativity of a thing to everything else in the field of perception to come to an understanding of its place and function within a larger whole.

Through discrimination we learn about what is valuable for our Higher Self's evolution, and can see why our ego had to go through certain lessons so we don't have to be trapped in those situations again. Even a negative or difficult experience can be turned to a positive realization if we see how it fits into our larger evolutionary path.

Discernment helps us attach to our best interests, detach from unproductive behaviors when it’s time to move on, and avoid needless problems and suffering. By understanding what to do or not do, what to say or not say, we come to precision in our efforts to be the best influence we can be in our world. We can know the truly real, the apparently real, the conditionally real, and the inherently unreal, and help others come out of illusions and delusions.

Pessimism Is Solved By Learning to Generate Good Will and Positivity

The antidote for the tendency to suffer over suffering is an intense Positivity, also known as Goodwill. This “Will-To-Good” is a self-generating radiance that external affairs cannot affect, but which can turn what is stagnant into something dynamic. The more you practice this eternal radiance, you are attuning your personality in harmony with your Inner Flame, about which it has been written:

You send out to others a radiation of your own Inner Flame -- the Light. No words exist which can exactly express this Inner Flame -- it is one of the most silently apparent of possessions. It travels from heart to heart in its own channel of expression and exchange. You always sense it -- even those sense it who do not acknowledge it with anything better than mental sophistication.

It is a unique and unmistakable thing, the kindly radiation of one who conducts, even though unconsciously, the current of Universal Force. This radiation is the one thing which does not work in alternate rhythm of activity and rest.

Radiance should not wax and wane in power depending upon the earth's recognition of it. It is continually existent under all conditions, whether others see it or not. This is your own bit of frequency, which you alone can manipulate. Therein is happiness secure -- the control of destiny is in the steady maintenance of a course satisfactory to your highest apex of perception; radiance is the reward of permanence of heart.

Once a habit of positivity is practiced, you find that many things that once bothered you just glance off your “shell of personality” harmlessly, and you expend less effort struggling with things. Negative thoughts fall like dead leaves in Autumn, never to return, and the positive view we find naturally leads us to searches for positive solutions to life problems.

Life Is A Evolving Process So Learn to Enjoy the Ride

Sometimes it’s easier, sometimes harder to practice the ideal of positivity, knowing the important from the unimportant, with detachment and dispassion. From one point of view, the level of difficulty doesn’t matter, since it's all an evolving process of your own self-realization, and therefore it's all good. Generating positivity is the power we have to turn the moment from a problem to an opportunity.

As you can see, the antidotes to suffering are fairly simple, universal, and only need to be practiced with an open mind and heart to work. No one else can buy them for you, sell them to you, or practice them for you. That’s the genius of the Plan for each of us. We are totally free to take any evolutionary leap at any moment of our choosing.

The trick to leaping is to keep your eye on where you’re going, and avoid the twists and turns that once led you into proverbial ditches wondering why things turned out as they did. Even if you still find yourself dealing with these from time to time, practicing any forms of one or more of these antidotes will restore the sunshine in your day, and peace in your heart. Take the power!

Every tendency can become a habit, and habits create lifestyle. Heraclitus offered that “character is destiny,” because as we shape our character we shape our destiny. Our habits either contribute to our well-being, or not. A habit of positivity definitely makes one feel better than not. Give it a try!

Enjoy the practice, and each time you are successful, you are generating personality integration. Eventually you will transcend suffering, will be able to assist others to transcend their suffering, and be stronger, clearer, and a blessing to your world. Aum.

© Copyright 2020 Robert Wilkinson - https://www.aquariuspapers.com
Reprinted on crystalwind.ca with persmission from Robert Wilkinson.