The Astrology of Happiness vs. Unhappiness

(Astrology Explored) In the United States we even have it in our “Declaration of Independence’:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

These words, birthed in 1776, were written barely five years before the discovery of the planet of individuation, Uranus. Prior to the establishment of the United States, most people were vassals of the lands and of the king. Self determination was the province of the very rich, though they usually had their own problems with the king with which to deal. Happiness was promised to the masses after death via entrance into heaven upon living a “good” life. Happiness on earth, however, was not guaranteed, and should one secure it, was viewed with some suspicion.

Written by Thomas Jefferson, who had Uranus, the ruler of Aquarius on his ascendant, the words in the Declaration of Independence were and are the claxton of The New Age of Aquarius. Written as a political manifesto this message non-the-less proclaimed that God gave us the right to be happy.

What a revolutionary idea! An unfortunately an idea that than many of us do not take to heart.

No doubt, human existence is difficult for many who live in this world. There is just too much injustice as men strive against men over the perceived lack of world resources to make it easy. Yet even for those that live in industrialized nations, where food and shelter is available to nearly everyone; even those that have much compared to the majority of human existence live in a state of un-parallelled unhappiness. The weird and the strange part of this that many people believe they do not deserve to be happy. Some can not even image what it would be like to be so.

Astrologers, along with many other professions, deal with unhappy people all the time. It is fair statement that we make our living from unhappy people. And let’s be honest, far and away the majority of people who seek our services are financially well-off. The nuts and bolts of daily living is smoothed by the balm of enough financial resources so that a lack of the necessities of life is not an issue. What is at issue is how we imagine things have to be in order to continue our existence. Not happiness, but our ideas of what it takes to maintain physical survival drives our existence.

Psychologists and counselors who deal with the same folks astrologers do have as their tool a guidebook of diagnoses called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association. They listen to the patient, determine the “illness” based on those guidelines and proceed to treat the “illness”. (No doubt there is a portion of the population who have chemical imbalances in the brain that effect their behavior in a way that can be quite dangerous to themselves. I am not talking about these people. Astrologers don’t (and shouldn’t) work with the mentally ill.)

Astrologers don’t have a DSM. We work with the birth chart, which in the hands of the professional astrologer reveals why a human acts the way he or she does. And quite often the reason why humans act they way the do is a fallacy in the thinking processes revealed in the how the planets are configured in a chart.

These fallacies are often reinforced by early childhood experiences, though one can make an argument that if one was born with a chart that has you thinking one way, you can not help but experience the world that way. I tend to think that is true. For instance, a person who is born with the instinct for shyness (quite often a Pisces, Capricorn or Cancer trait) will always feel shy even with substantial work learning how not to act shy.

At some point, however, we pass the point where we are no longer children, when we have the legal and moral right to decide how we want to live our lives. We can chose whether or whether or live the scripts of childhood or chart a new course for ourselves. In other words we can chose to exercise our inalienable right to be happy.

Why then do people not make this choice for themselves even when physical survival is not an issue?

The birth chart is literally map of how you respond to the world. If you are born, for instance, with a grand cross in fixed signs, you are going to be quite fixed in your actions and opinions. Many people might find you difficult to deal with. It is a defining feature of your chart.

But, to paraphrase a scientific axiom: The Universe abhors definition. Whatever we do, whatever we say, the Universe actively acts to rewrite that definition. I imagine the Universe working like a physicist at a chalkboard, working on a grand equation, erasing and rewriting portions of the equation. Whatever the Universe is working on, it is going to test Its definition of you but sending the anti-thesis of you in your direction. If you are born with a grand cross in fixed signs you are given a wealth of opportunities to test your resolve and learn flexibility.

We can learn the lessons or resist them. This is the failsafe in the design of the Universe called “free will”. Free will allows the Universe to test its design without risking Its total collapse by allowing Its individual elements to reject those tests that could damage the design. As individual elements of the Universe we get caught up in these choices, to learn or not to learn, to experience or not to experience. To be honest it is an exhausting process for most people and leaves people feeling like they have little energy to explore happiness in and of itself.

But if we have an inalienable right to pursue happiness, happiness itself is a state that must be part and parcel of the Universe’s own existence. It can not be otherwise. The Universe can’t bestow happiness as inalienable right if it not imbued with happiness in its own nature. Happiness exists then regardless of our design, and also, since we are part of the Universe, an inalienable part of our own design. Happiness exist within our birth chart whether or not we chose to access it.

Image published under a Creative Commons License as listed on Flickr by user richardwinchell