A woman believes that people are stealing her clothes, her jewelry, her money. She holds conversations with her mother, dead now for 30 years, and sometimes thinks that her son is a distant cousin and that her husband is her father. She hears voices and sees things and people that aren’t there.
Another woman holds conversations with the dead, hears voices, sees things that aren’t there, and knows that her son was her husband in a previous life. People seek her out for precisely these reasons and pay her handsomely for the messages she brings from the dead.
The first woman is an Alzheimer’s patient; the second woman is a psychic medium. Both illustrate the elusive nature of Neptune, its ethereal veil, the way it dissolves barriers between realities. Think of Neptune as a tuning fork. Tap it. It hums. But no two people hear the hum in exactly the same way. Neptune transported Edgar Cayce into other realms and swept Einstein into the heart of scientific truth. It gave diarist Anais Nin penetrating insight into other people. But it can also lead into the basest escapism through alcohol, drugs, sex, addictions of all kinds, the darker side of the occult. It can lead to religious fervor, religious wars, extreme religious views and beliefs.
Neptune also rules compassion, the higher self, inspired art, escapism, addiction, everything psychic, spirit communication, imagination, connection to something larger than ourselves. It dissolves the boundary between ego and others, so there’s often an element of confusion involved in any Neptune transit, but particularly with this one.
Neptune dipped into Pisces briefly in 2011, then retrograded back into Aquarius. On February 3, 2012, it entered Pisces again and will be there for the next 14 years. We can already see its influence being played out on the global stage.
In American politics, particularly in the Republican party, the religious fervor has reached frenzied proportions. For example, Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker write of the e-mails she receives, including one “about why women have been saddled with the monthly inconvenience and painful childbirth – for tempting men to do evil and failing to recognize their roles as ‘helpmeets’ for men.”
She quotes one e-mail: “Pagan women like yourself have no regard for the natural order of God’s plan and shamelessly promulgate the ‘we are goddesses’ bile that has infected the entire country and pretty much stopped it in its tracks from incurring God’s blessings.” And Parker is a moderate Republican, who is anti-abortion, not a leftist feminist.
But beneath this frenzy is another current – a burgeoning interest in the nature of reality and of consciousness, in how we are all connected, and in how we can live more compassionately. In other words, we are witnessing the war between paradigms – the old and the new.
This struggle between the old paradigm and the one that is evolving, emerging, is sometimes so glaringly evident that it’s shocking. Here’s the old paradigm:
- Mostly male white politicians talk about legislation to ban contraception and to require transvaginal ultrasound – medical rape – before a woman can have an abortion.
- Scrap social safety net programs – Medicaid, Medicare – and privatize Social Security.
- The real extremists in the old paradigm consider college “elitist” and advocate doing away with public education and having every kid in America home schooled.
- Never allow gay and lesbian couples to get married.
- Stoke the war machine; it’s great for the economy.
- If you’re poor, elderly, you’re on your own. If you’re sick and don’t have health insurance, well, too bad.
- No tax hikes on the wealthy, keep the burden on the poor and the middle class.
- We live in a mechanistic universe, where everything is cause and effect.
- Holistic health and medicine, ie. the mind-body-spirit connections, is just New Age silliness.
- UFOs/ETs are nonexistent. We humans reign supreme in the universe.
- We have the best medical system in the world and we’re working on drugs that can cure anything.
- Climate change/global warming is a myth.
This list is long and depressing, so I’ll stop here. Just tune in the evening news for more.
Here’s what is so far apparent in the new paradigm:
- What affects you affects me. We are connected. We are all a part of Indra’s net.
- If you can imagine it, it’s possible.
- We create our realities from the inside out, based on our beliefs, emotions, and thoughts.
- Compassion, forgiveness, love, and diplomacy are more powerful than war.
- Regardless of differences in ethnicity, culture, religious beliefs, gender, belief systems, we are equal.
- Intuition and synchronicity are recognized as essential tools.
- The universe – or Source, God, the higher self, whatever you want to call it – communicates with us constantly.
- We are the change we can believe in.
- Now, this instant, is the only moment that counts.
- Each of us has a purpose on the planet and every purpose is equally important.
- Keep an open mind even when the idea seems preposterous. After all, it was once widely believed that the world was flat, that electricity wasn’t feasible, that travel to other planets was possible only in science fiction.
- We share the planet with wildlife that is probably as intelligent or more intelligent than we are.
- We live many lives.
- Confront your fears and move on.
- Be forever curious, honor your own wisdom, never lose sight of your dreams.
- Indulge your innate creativity.
- And okay, I don’t know if this is really part of the new paradigm, but I hope it is: if ET knocks at your door, cautiously invite him/her in with the understanding that you will not be manipulated or controlled in any way, that contact will be only beneficial.
I’m sure I’ve left stuff off this list. But you get the idea. The new paradigm is Neptune’s domain. And we’ve got the next 14 years to perfect it.
