December 2015 Astrology – Sowing and Germination

December 2015 is shaping up to look like a time of pivotal and profound decision-making. Both Carl Boudreau and Steve Judd are on the same page on this one.

Carl writes:
“I have discussed the world’s gradual emergence from a social, political and economic imbalance that massively favored the 1%. This imbalance was caused by a planetary arrangement that first went into effect in the early 1980s.  Roughly 30 years of this imbalance left the world’s social, economic and political systems in very serious need of reform….Progressive victories are no longer sporadic (i.e the rise of Bernie Sanders, the election of Jeremy Corbyn and Justin Trudeau). They no longer seem like flukes. Hope and the determination to bring change are quietly suffusing global collective consciousness. ..The astrological tables have turned. The economic and political tables appear to be turning also. Many of us want to hear that trickles of reform will soon combine into surging, torrents of reform. But the planets are telling us something different. They seem, rather, to be talking about long, slow, carefully thought out changes.
I know that many want to see a global surge – a rapid and sustained acceleration – of progressive reform. We want to see the collective consciousness lit brightly from within with a burning enthusiasm for sensible, realistic, practical, lasting, but above all, quick reform….The charts, then, are talking more about process than they are about substance, or content. The planets are saying that rather than a shared passion for reform, the people of the world will develop a shared passion for careful reasoning, guided by a will to heal, uplift and preserve, colored by a will to fairness and compassion. That is not the same thing as a unified global reform movement.”

Is the end near?

With climate-change talks happening in Paris as I write this, several newspapers declaring that it is the end of reality TV (Thank God!), McDonald’s, once a teflon-like corporate behemoth, is set to close almost 700 restaurants around the world and has been facing sliding sales the past few years due to changing consumer tastes, and Black Friday sales this past week at a record low, consumers are less interested in buying cheap, shitty stuff they don’t really need but are now wanting to spend their money on accruing experiences instead. It would seem that on a deeper, even subconscious level, there is an underground change which is germinating. In my mind that’s a sign, even a small, incremental one, of some emotional and spiritual maturity taking place. We’ll see if it catches on within the larger public and the masses.

The thing with changing directions towards something better is that there is an awful lot of hard work involved. The easiest thing on Earth is to stay where you are and keep doing what you’ve always done and NOT change your routine or habits. Personally, I think that’s the reason so many people are miserable, they simply don’t want to change their routine.

We all want to see things turn out for the best, we all want happiness, respect and love for ourselves and others, we all want to live on a planet which provides us with clean air to breath, clean water to drink, healthy food to nourish us, a roof over our heads to keep us safe and warm, we all want to find meaning in our lives and experiences. However despite what New Age potboiler, well-intentioned but misguided marketing non-profit campaigns and a market economy that wants to keep you in place as a mindless consumer and a powerless vessel for corporate and political entities, change only happens when every last one of us puts our shoulder to the wheel. You have to work your ass off if you want real change and not just hope that somebody else or some external factor will do it for you. It takes some gumption and guts. To paraphrase Sarah Harrison of Wikileaks, courage is contagious.

Legendary French film director Louis Malle did an epic 7-part documentary series on India called “Phantom India” back in 1968/9 which was aired on French TV and then eventually the BBC. In a lifetime of work which included the beloved “My Dinner with Andre” and “Atlantic City”, Malle considered “Phantom India” the pinnacle of his work. (All 7 parts are up on Youtube, just be sure to hit the CC button on the bottom of each video to get English subtitles since it is all in French.)
He ended the series in part 7 with the following words and a dramatic visual scene of men literally pushing a cartload of salt along railway tracks with the brute force of their own bodies. (from 49:09 in the video below.)

“In India we discovered with wonder, another way of being, another way of living and seeing the world that made us all feel nostalgic, like a secret forever lost. But we felt all along it was a world living on borrowed time. Here, where the population is greater than Africa and South America combined, modern life increasingly takes the form of man exploiting his fellow man.”

We still have some time to change Malle’s last words in the film. We still have some time to rediscover that lost secret. But not by much.