March 12, 2004

• Second Saturn Return

  
  

  Mine is coming to an end, the second passage of Saturn over its natal position for me.  I feel an urge to crow about it, and crow I will.  I have had many opportunities during the last three decades, since my first Saturn return, to reflect on some of the ways in which I differ from the norm.  One of the obvious ones of these differences about me is in the way I feel about time.  Saturn represents Father Time.  As I look around and listen to my peers it seems that most of you see time as your enemy.  You spend billions, collectively, to erase the appearance of aging and many of you have found ways to convince yourselves that it hasn’t happened and will never happen to you.  Not I.  Time is my friend.  I don’t try to deny or hide my age any more than I try to hide or deny anything else about myself.  I am what I am and it is, I think, something to crow about.

  
  

  Where I suppose I went astray from the well-trodden common path was right at the beginning.  A combination of genetic weaknesses and a lengthy traumatic birth resulted in some serious doubts of my viability.  By accident (an accident from my mother’s perspective;  I was deliberately eavesdropping) I found out at around age three that I “wouldn’t live to grow up.”  There was a tearful and traumatic scene right then and there, and then with the secret out the family set out to “let me get as much living in as I could in the time I had.”

  
  

  Each birthday from then on was a triumphant milestone.  I stubbornly refused to die.  I fought infections with willpower when my immune system refused to get involved.  I believe that “knowing”, believing, that I had very little time to live enhanced my life by driving me to make the most of what I had.  Getting older was my primary goal in life from the start, so wouldn’t it be foolish at this late date to start regretting aging?

  
  

  On www.innerself.com, Anne Whitaker writes:

  
  

  
  

  There are important differences in the developmental demands of the stages symbolized by the three major cycles of Saturn. The first, from birth to ages 29-30, is the thesis stage. It is the most intensely physical, energetic, and least conscious cycle. It is about building the platform on which to stand in life. The second cycle, from 29-30 to 58-59 is the antithesis stage.

  
  

  The initial structure is tested, challenged to grow; awareness and consciousness are more fully developed; life’s goals are pursued and hopefully achieved to a sufficient degree in order to bring at least a tolerable level of satisfaction. In the synthesis stage, culminating at ages 87-88, ideally there is a bringing together and summing up of what one’s life has meant, and a shifting of emphasis from worldly achievement to reflection and spiritual maturing. There is an acceptance of, and preparation for, the inevitable physical decline that ends in the death of the physical body.

  
  

  I find the Saturn archetype profoundly paradoxical. On the one hand, Saturn represents that which nails us to the cross of matter, holding us in the world of form. On the other hand, when Saturn’s challenges have been patiently and honestly worked with, and a mature realism arrived at, the sense of freedom of spirit that can then be released is immense — full of the potential for satisfaction and joy. This sense of freedom is unconfined because it does not relate to matter at all. I am sure this is what the Buddhists mean when they talk about the “diamond soul”.

  
  

  I cannot begin to guess what I’m going to be doing with whatever time I have left in this lifetime.  According to the description above, for the last thirty years I’ve been doing what I’m supposed to do in the next thirty years.  At the time of my first Saturn return, I had brought myself to a desperate situation through drugs and dysfunctional relationships.  I lied a lot, didn’t like myself, hated my life and had tried to end it a few times.  Then I got lucky.  I got the help I needed to turn my life around.  Anyone with sufficient curiosity can find the details in the memoir links in the left module on my main Xanga page.

  
  

  Once I had learned to accept and love myself as I was, I gradually began to become a person I could love and accept.  And Ms. Whitaker finds the Saturn archetype “paradoxical”?!  I find paradox everywhere.  Paradox is one of the keys that clue me to the importance, the relevance, the TRUTH of any given time or situation.  If it is a paradox, it has to be REAL. Is it paradoxical that I love Saturnian influences while most people hate them?  Ancient astrologers called Saturn the “greater Malefic”, Mars being the lesser one.  I don’t perceive it that way. 

  
  

  Astrologers also tend to think of square (90 degrees of separation) aspects as scary or bad.  Not I.  My natal chart is full of squares.  I have Saturn square my Moon, Mars, Neptune and Midheaven.  I love it.  I recognize how each of those influences has expressed itself in my life.  They have been the challenges that have driven me to excel.  How can I resent or regret that?

  
  

  At the time of my first Saturn return, I was much more “into” astrology than I am now.  I paid attention to my current transits, tried to predict what was coming up, etc.  Now, I usually notice a transit during or after its occurrence, as I reflect on what’s been going on in my life.  As that first Saturn return approached, I was primed for it, ready for a change, welcoming it.  I had expectations.   

  
  

  Those expectations were gloriously fulfilled.  I expected to “grow up” and “settle down”.  I did.  I also stopped telling lies, started standing up for myself, asserting my needs.  Who I was became good enough for me and if it wasn’t good enough for someone else, too bad for them.  So what?  You don’t like me?  Then leave me alone.  When I’m alone, I’m in good company.

  
  

  The natural selection process that has resulted from that “so what” attitude I developed at around age 30 after having spent my youth trying to please everyone else, has brought me a very select group of associates.  Rejection by my family or anyone else is not a source of dismay for me because I accept myself.  And as for myself, the only people I reject are ones who evidently mean me harm.

  
  

  My closest friends right now are a bunch of self-professed “dope fiends”, members of Narcotics Anonymous.  Tonight, during the “meeting after the meeting” while Greyfox was engaged in a game of dueling NPDs with one member, I was discussing the finer points of NA protocol with two others.  I’d noticed that some NAs I met in public places had snubbed me, acted as if they didn’t know me when I said hi.  I learned to my surprise (though it did make sense after they explained) that for a lot of members their outside, “normal” lives are kept entirely separate from their lives within the program.  They don’t want their families, friends and co-workers to find out that they are dope fiends.

  
  

  This of course is not true for everyone, certainly not for Greyfox or me.  Some others in our local group wear caps and jackets with the NA logos on them, which we would if we could afford them.  Stevie Ray Vaughn, I’m told, wore earrings with the NA logo.  There are those who feel that such displays run counter to the “tradition of anonymity”, but it has been my observation that wherever one finds “anonymity” in any of the 12-step programs, one finds hypocrisy right there in step with it.  AA meeting halls have portraits of Bill W. and Dr. Bob on the walls.  AAs make pilgrimages to Bill W’s grave, fercrissake!  It’s a personality cult, so where’s the anonymity?

  
  

  Tonight I was told a story that illustrates why some people don’t like the open public displays of one’s membership in our supposedly secret societies.  Supposedly, a dead junkie was once found with a needle hanging from his arm, and wearing an NA t-shirt.  Bad publicity, yes, but that is what relapse is all about and nobody is more aware of the hazards of relapse than we are.

  
  

  There are other perils, hazards to be traversed like those on an obstacle course.  One of the men I was talking to tonight is someone I recognize from a past life.  That’s not uncommon, my meeting reincarnational associates.  Thirty years ago at the time of my first Saturn return, I was aware of an odd phenomenon that had been occurring to me throughout my life.  I’d meet people who seemed oddly familiar and sometimes they, too, would wonder where we knew each other from.  It was right around that time that the first of those familiar faces, when I said I felt we’d met somewhere before, said matter-of-factly, “Yeah, I knew you in a past life.”

  
  

  I didn’t believe it.  I assumed he was kidding.  Now I know better.  Now I remember.  Tonight I had to ask myself what my best course is in this situation.  I saw in this man’s eyes the first time we met that he “knew” me.  No surprise in that, because I knew him.  I recognize in him another “old soul” (AKA, “slow learner”) like me, like Greyfox, like Doug–when my son was a tiny newborn, he had such old eyes!  

  
  

  Occasionally at a meeting I’ll make eye contact with that man and perceive a question in his eyes.  Tonight, he made an oblique reference to it.  He said something in that meeting after the meeting about meeting people and wondering if he recognized them from meetings or maybe from his work, which involved a lot of public contact.  He told me an anecdote about a woman he met at an NA meeting long ago, whose face seemed familiar.  She turned out to be someone he’d had sex with when he was stoned.  I knew he was wondering where he’d met me, and maybe hoping I’d enlighten him.

  
  

  I didn’t, but I did discuss it with my husband on the way home, more of that “road work” we’ve become accustomed to doing on the long drives home from meetings.  It would have been both easy and fun to have just blurted out to the man that we had known each other in a past life.  I didn’t, because I knew that he would either discount it as impossible or he would be “hooked”, intrigued, and want to pursue it.  Greyfox agrees that it’s better not to open that particular Pandora’s Box.  Of course he would, because he certainly doesn’t want another man pursuing… me.

  
  

  I love that man I have only just met.  It’s a lot like the love I felt for Greyfox before I ever met him.  It clues me that the relationship I once had with this new friend was very deep and very special.  At an earlier time in my life I would have pursued him, drawn to him by the karmic connection.  Such things have happened–I have made them happen–many times.  It’s a pattern with which I am all too familiar.  But now I understand that this life is the one that matters.  This is the life I’m living now.  This moment of this life is all there is, really.

  
  

  Ms. Whitaker says about the Second Saturn Return:

  
  

  
  

  Saturn is the planet of strict justice. Blind, stubborn, arrogant, or fearful refusal to face certain basic realities in life, as the second cycle unfolds, skews the life path further and further away from who we could become were we able to acknowledge and accept who we actually are, rather than try to be who we are not. This brings increasing pain, dissatisfaction, emptiness, depression, and perhaps despair, as the second Saturn return approaches.

  
  

  By the second Saturn return, we can see what our lives have become — and we can see what it is too late to change. This is one of the most fundamental differences in perspective between the second and the first return. At age 30 we have probably still to sow the most productive seeds of our lives — what we have already sown is still only germinating. But by the approach of 60, we are reaping the harvest and are confronted with the stark Biblical words, “As you sow, so shall you reap.”

  
  

  At one end of the spectrum are those who arrive at this stage feeling that their time on this Earth has not been wasted. They have very few regrets and are prepared to face the final cycle of life with equanimity, perhaps rooted in great spiritual depth. These people usually retain a zest for life and its remaining possibilities. At the other end are those who have sown meanly, poorly, or fearfully, and are reaping a harvest of regret, bitterness, loneliness, physical ill health, and fear of the waning of physical power and attractiveness in the inevitable decline toward death.

  
  

  
  

  I have not been, “blind, stubborn, …or fearful,” so perhaps I can be excused a bit of arrogance.  I have been not just willing to face reality.  I have gone out of my way to discover what is real, to dispel illusions, to deliberately disillusion myself (and others, but they don’t always appreciate it).  My time has not been wasted. 

  
  

  All the regrets that I had when I was younger have resolved themselves into either gratitude for blessings in disguise or acceptance of human failings and understandable mistakes.  I understand.  Life has never felt as good or the future looked as bright as it does for me at this moment.  Whatever happens, I am ready for it.  My expectations at this time in my life can be summed up thusly:  E.W.O.P.:  everything works out perfectly.  The scales of Karma are always in balance.  That’s just how it is, in this finite observable part of God’s Infinite Universe.

  • 5:32 am
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